3 Review(s)

Inspired by the flotsam of contemporary culture, by the language of journalism and spam emails, Philip Terry transforms Shakespeare's sonnet sequence into a celebration of the possibilities of language unleashed. Shakespeare's themes of fading beauty, posterity, immortality and death find their contemporary responses in the world of celebrity gossip, consumer products and the credit crunch. The results spark with energy, as disrespectful and anarchic as a cartoon - and as assured in their control of line. Philip Terry, an acclaimed translator of the poetry of Raymond Queneau, plays language games by the rules of Oulipo in his creation of a Shakespearean chimaera, the hybrid that takes on a life of its own.