I read one of Mimi Khalvati’s poems via The Guardian‘s poem of the week blog (which is as pretentious as you’d expect, in general), and decided I’d check out more. Afterwardness is a collection of sonnets, including the title poem, each one playing with the form to some extent or another.

It’s been a while since I tried to think super deeply about poetry so I’m sure I missed a lot of what Khalvati was trying to do by using the sonnet form. I think I read that they’re all Petrarchan sonnets, but I thought those were an octave and a sestet, while I picked a couple of Khalvati’s poems and they didn’t match that ABBAABBA rhyme scheme (and nor were they arranged into an octave and a sestet). So not sure about that, probably I’m missing a lot there.

All the same, I enjoyed the way Khalvati writes, and found her poems pretty accessible. I think I might’ve enjoyed them more with a tiny bit more context about Khalvati to place some of her references (like the fact that she’s Iranian) — I tend to be that kind of reader, not so much because I want to assume that the poet is always writing about personal experience, but to understand where they’re coming from, the context that shaped the poem.

I’m going to read more of Khalvati’s work for sure — this was a good experiment.