Happy Thursday to all you dVerse bards from Kim of Writing in North Norfolk, and welcome to the tavern! I am your serving wench for today, with ale, sack wine, malmsey and mead.

I have a wonderful little book by Erik Didriksen called Pop Sonnets, in which some well-known pop songs have been re-written in the style of William Shakespeare. As the sonnets in the book are copyrighted, I have provided a link to Tumblr, where new pop sonnets are posted every Thursday: https://popsonnet.tumblr.com/

The book itself is a work of art, printed in an old-fashioned font, Shakespearean style, with a front page stating ‘Never before imprinted’. It is divided into five sections:

• Sonnets of Love include Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, The Cure’s ‘Friday I’m in Love’ and Weezer’s ’Buddy Holly’;
• Sonnets of Despair include Britney Spears’ ‘Oops! I Did It Again’, Green Day’s ‘Basket Case’ and Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’;
• Sonnets of Time and Mortality include ‘Talking Heads’ ‘Once in a Lifetime’, Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Beliievin’’ and Don Henley’s ‘The Boys of Summer’;
• Rogues, Rascals and Wanton Women include the Beastie Boys’ ‘(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)’, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’;
• Ballads of Heroes include Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’ and Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’.

There are so many songs, I can’t list them all.

The challenge is to choose a modern popular song, preferably one that everyone knows, and re-write it as a Shakespearean sonnet, which can be serious, humorous or just plain silly! To make it more fun, don’t give your sonnet its original title so that we can take a guess as to what it might be!

This form has already been covered in previous dVerse prompts and the one with the most comprehensive explanation is a Form for All by Gay Reiser Cannon from September 2012, for which I have provided a link: https://dversepoets.com/2012/09/13/formforall-basic-sonnet-forms/

If you are new, here’s how to join in:

• Write a sonnet in response to the challenge;
• Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr Linky below;
• There you will find links to other poets, and more will join so check back to see more poems;
• Read and comment on other poets’ work, we all come here to have our poems read;
• Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog;
• Comment and participate in our discussion below, if you like.   We are a friendly bunch of poets.
• Have fun.