1 September - 22 September = Submission
23 September - 29 September = Voting (via journal)
30 September = Winner Announced


You may use any form of sonnet, as long as you state in your artist's comments which form you used so we can assess whether you have successfully mastered the form or not.
Feel free to enter the SSS at ProjectDFC at the same time with your entries. There is also @crownofsonnets who will be accepting sonnets this month especially.
You may enter as many as you wish but only one of your entries may win.
There are no prizes - the joy of winning is enough. You will be mentioned at the top of every journal until we do another forms challenge in the future, so there is some exposure. You are also allocated a widget on our front page.
Entries to the 'contest submissions' folder please.
Any questions, ask!
_{These rules may change. I retain the right to do so and you will be notified.}


What is a sonnet?
_{noun
noun: sonnet; plural noun: sonnets}
- A poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line.

How many different forms are there?
- Basically three (Italian (Petrarchan), Spenserian, English (Shakespearean)), but many derivations.

What are the differences?
- The only difference between the three forms is their rhyme scheme. All the sonnets follow the 'Iambic Pentameter' structure of meter.

Examples?
- Italian (Petrarchan): (abba/abba/cdd/ece) OR (abba/abba/cde/cde) OR (abba/abba/cdc/cdc) OR (abba/abba/cdc/dcd)
A sonnet by Wordsworth:

"London, 1802"

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

-Spenserian: (abab/bcbc/cdcd/ee)

"Sonnet LIV"

Of this World's theatre in which we stay,
My love like the Spectator idly sits,
Beholding me, that all the pageants play,
Disguising diversely my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in mirth like to a Comedy;
Soon after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I wail and make my woes a Tragedy.
Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in my mirth nor rues my smart;
But when I laugh, she mocks: and when I cry
She laughs and hardens evermore her heart.
What then can move her? If nor mirth nor moan,
She is no woman, but a senseless stone.

- English (Shakespearean): (abab/cdcd/efef/gg)

"Sonnet XXIX"

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

- The 'Indefinables':
There are, of course, some sonnets that don't fit any clear recognizable pattern but still certainly function as sonnets. Shelley's "Ozymandias" belongs to this category
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman wrote sonnets with free abandonand with virtually no regard for any kind of pattern at all, his rhymes after the first few lines falling seemingly at random.

_{Info from: www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm}


Feel free to ask! I don't bite! Let's hope we get many entries!

Ciao,

J