[Andrew Szilvasy]

Roger, Jennifer, Michael, and Maryann (again!)

Thanks for these suggestions. I'm compiling a series of sonnets for my students, and I love the variety of voices they'll be able to select.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

Originally Posted by Duncan Gillies MacLaurin

Perhaps, Andrew, you might consider a third category under c), namely American/non-American. Or is it just fine with an all-American line-up?

Duncan,

I'll happily take some non-American sonneteers. It's a Brit lit course (Chaucer to Modernism, really), so I do want to make sure there are present voices responding to the sonnet tradition, and especially American. But now that my list is pretty much exclusively American, a few voices from the UK and beyond would probably help round out the selections.

[Mark McDonnell]

Well the UK's current poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy should be on your list in that case. She's quite unique as laureates go in being the first to be female, non-English (she's a Scot) and openly gay.

Her sonnets 'Anne Hathaway', 'Prayer' and 'Hour' are all very lovely.

[Mark McDonnell]

Though you'd have to explain that the last line of 'Prayer' is taken from a very arcane thing in Britain on BBC radio 4 called the shipping forecast.

[David Anthony]

Yes, take a look at Prayer. (I think she decided recently she wasn't gay.)

[Mary Meriam]

Originally Posted by David Anthony

Yes, take a look at Prayer. (I think she decided recently she wasn't gay.)

Really????

[Mark McDonnell]

Really??

(sorry to parrot you Mary...)

[Mark McDonnell]

Though not being gay myself I used half as many question marks...

Still seems weird though.

[David Anthony]

Yes, I think so.

[Mark McDonnell]

Nope. A quick Google search of 'Carol Ann Duffy not gay' yields no results. Though it does bring up a poem she recently wrote about the Orlando shootings in which she states in the last line that 'God is gay'.