Newcastle Sonnets

Once aworking-class heartland, Newcastle is now acclaimed as one ofthe top 5 hipster cities in the world. In the sequence of sonnets which composeher homage to Newcastle, Glastonbury celebrates the city's oddities andcontradictions, remixing the material effects of gentrification with the regionalvernacular and punk drama of locally based social media blogs, Tumblr,Instagram, Facebook and Google Maps. An antipodean, regional queering of TedBerrigan's New York-based Sonnets, Glastonbury'spoems make music from what's around, embracing both DIY chutzpah and the swipes,likes, and filtered screens of internet culture. This is Newcastle in cosplay,part eggs benedict, part pebblecrete, where a coal boat named 'Fiction' isalways approaching the shore.

'Channelling the subconscious of the post-industrial city, Newcastle Sonnets reads like poetic Pop-Rocks, its moments and insights condensed into flares and crackles.' -Vanessa Berry

'Hip, suave, pert, pinpointing, and penetrating, these poems engage with locale in most enterprising ways.' - Judith Beveridge, Australian Book Review - Books of the Year 2018