Fifteeners

The sonnet is a classic lyric form that has beguiled and perplexed poets for over seven hundred years. In this, her thirteenth collection, Jordie Albiston re-invents the sonnet structure, trading meter for syllabics, and employing fifteen lines in lieu of the traditional fourteen. Themes of destruction and loss, hope and wonder, and the pressing fate of an unstable world, are coded like enduring questions into the machinery of these extraordinary poem.Albiston’s relationship with the sonnet has prevailed since her earliest work, most notably the highly celebrated and award-winning the sonnet according to ’m’. She is recipient of the Patrick White Literary Award, the NSW Premier’s Prize, the Mary Gilmore Award, the Wesley Michel Wright Prize, and many other honours. 3