Experimenting with the Sonnet: Breaking the Form

How to master the rules of formal poetry to break them with grace with Madeleine Bazil

Hey friends, welcome to The Forever Workshop. First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today…

A workshop for:

Poets who want to learn the fundamentals of sonnet structure and how to break all the rules to create boundary-pushing, emotive poetry.

Your instructor:

Madeleine Bazil: poet, writer, filmmaker, and author of Field Guide, an ecopoetics newsletter.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how the sonnet works as both a formal container and a site of experimentation

• Learn how to make the volta the emotional engine of a sonnet

• What contemporary poets borrow from traditional sonnet structure (meter, rhyme, 14 lines) and what they deliberately break

• Why constraint in poetry can sharpen language and deepen invention, rather than limit expression

By the end of this workshop, you’ll have a new understanding of how the sonnet structure can be transgressed, manipulated, and played with to create emotionally affecting poetry.