Sonneteers
Sandra and Ben Doller
As the authors explain:
Sonneteers is a 50 (actually 51, numbered through 49) "sonnet" sequence, a demi-corona of anti-sonnets.
Constructed between August 2004-December 2004 as part of a relationship-experiment (ongoing), the first Sonneteer spontaneously combusted in the apartment of Biswamit Dwibedy, who had a Shakespeare sonnet in his typewriter. Turning this sonnet 90 degrees in the typewriter allowed space for the birth of the Sonneteer — with each of us (Sandra & Ben Doller, formerly Miller & Doyle) writing alternate lines, messing with rhyme scheme, playing with the instantaneity of the art object-verbal object as a performative mode. (In the case of the first sonneteer, someone was reading from the book of Revelations in a thick brogue...)
In the ensuing sonneteers, ink was spilled, more typewriters were deployed, and simultaneous sonneteering occurred. A dialogue emerged not just between the writers and their super-slant rhymed couplets, but also between the found-art-papers and the texts, and the practices of improvisation and virtuosity. We're particularly attracted to the dual notion of the "sonneteer" as both a sonnet-writer and a shoddy poet, and we sought to push these boundaries in our multiple resistances to form and regiment.
As the authors explain:
Sonneteers is a 50 (actually 51, numbered through 49) "sonnet" sequence, a demi-corona of anti-sonnets.
Constructed between August 2004-December 2004 as part of a relationship-experiment (ongoing), the first Sonneteer spontaneously combusted in the apartment of Biswamit Dwibedy, who had a Shakespeare sonnet in his typewriter. Turning this sonnet 90 degrees in the typewriter allowed space for the birth of the Sonneteer — with each of us (Sandra & Ben Doller, formerly Miller & Doyle) writing alternate lines, messing with rhyme scheme, playing with the instantaneity of the art object-verbal object as a performative mode. (In the case of the first sonneteer, someone was reading from the book of Revelations in a thick brogue...)
In the ensuing sonneteers, ink was spilled, more typewriters were deployed, and simultaneous sonneteering occurred. A dialogue emerged not just between the writers and their super-slant rhymed couplets, but also between the found-art-papers and the texts, and the practices of improvisation and virtuosity. We're particularly attracted to the dual notion of the "sonneteer" as both a sonnet-writer and a shoddy poet, and we sought to push these boundaries in our multiple resistances to form and regiment.