Valley Press
Out Now
More about James Nash on his official website
James Nash’s sonnets were first published in 2012 and have since been a big hit. Some have even been featured on BBC Radio 3. These 63 sonnets focus on issues of all proportions which matter in the author’s life.
I absolutely adore reading poetry and one of the main reasons for it is that you get to find out so much about he author from reading his work, especially if the poems are on a topic which is important to that particular writer.
Poetry also liberates the reader a lot more when it comes to the interpretations of the content they have just read. In books, films and plays there is little room for the reader to really explore the meaning of what is said, due to the detailed storyline and narrative. Poetry, on the other hand, is full of connotations and metaphors, enabling the audience to not necessarily have the same semantic understanding of the meaning as everybody else, thus resulting in different individual responses.
This collection of poetry is focused on romance, although some of the poems do not even mention love. There is one sonnet in particular, ‘Sonnet 39,’ which is basically the author criticising his work as well as talking about the difficulties of writing. The rhyming couplet in this piece particularly stood out to me: “For that’s the challenge, not poems like this/ Which, if truth be told, are a piece of piss.” These two lines are very relatable for anybody who has ever tried to write anything, because there are times when everybody struggles with writer’s block and is unhappy with the outcome of their work but it takes some guts to actually publically state so. It also makes you appreciate the fact that writing is not as easy as some may think.
Finally, I would like to address the lack of titles in the book. The sonnets are numbered, which prevents you from having a vague idea of the subject of any of the poems; the only hint you get is the main title of the collection . I suppose in a way it does give the reader leverage to decide what they think each sonnet is about. However, I would quite like to know what they all mean to the writer. After all, they are all a reflection of his feelings.
Overall, I do think that this is a splendid read, especially for the winter when you can spend a cosy evening wrapped in a blanket with a hot beverage reading 63 beautifully written sonnets.
