Strike Sonnet Chain is a corona of sonnets engaging with the industrial unrest that has marked much of the post-Pandemic period. It is a reaction not just to stagnating wages, continuing inequality, precarious labour conditions, and mishandling of pensions, but to the specious narrative that we are all emerging as one body from the Pandemic ‘together’, and committing to the post-Brexit era.

There is, rather, a growing perception that the mind-set we had willingly or otherwise acceded to before the Pandemic both worsened its effect and deepened its long-term impact. That false consciousness has been shaken, hopefully fundamentally.

So, as many of us vote to withdraw our labour/consent, we decided to invite poets, many of whom work in the university sector, to write a chain poem, linking last line to first in the spirit of sonnet-based solidarity. The poems not only look at how work (and its cessation) impacts on the imagination, but also embody the ways the imagination itself works.

There is a Greek expression, τα μάτια σου δεκατέσσερα (your eyes fourteen), meaning: two eyes are scarcely enough, keep your wits about you. We hope these fourteen fourteen-liners help with that.

The pamphlet is edited by WN Herbert and Jacob Polley and features work by:

Tiffany Atkinson – Tara Bergin – Paul Farley

WN Herbert – Sarah Howe – Jacob Polley

Claudine Toutoungi – Katharine Towers

Matthew Welton – Ben Wilkinson.

ISBN: 978-1-7395468-0-9

£6 (including postage)

50% from each copy sold will go to the UCU strike fund. Once we’ve covered the cost of production, that will rise to 100%.