The Great Canadian Sonnet

‘Just because I’m writing this long story doesn’t mean to say I think I’m a great writer, or even mildly talented. No, I am merely trying to put things down in the best way I know how, contributing to the story of the human race in whatever we do anyway, things only I can put down in this way because everyone has something different to put down in different ways, whether or not he actually does put them down, how comfortably the language fits him in a literary way. And besides I really like it, and think of the money to be made if others like it and the word spreads … No matter how imperfect my vision, talents, literary conceptions, I must be putting it down good, because of the enjoyment of it all. Ah, joy’ – Dave McFadden

Since its first appearance in 1974, The Great Canadian Sonnet has been a classic. Shaped like those Golden Big Little Books, it matches each page of McFadden’s bizarre text with an even more bizarre drawing by Greg Curnoe.

Follow Canadian hero Rick Wayne and company as they move sideways to grapple with the Big Questions. Watch as they try, for instance, to ‘come up with a really good poem, one that will be truly loved by the prime minister and truly meaningful for the civil service.’ Learn exciting facts with them – ‘Yes, Hamilton, Ontario is 492 miles north and slightly west of Washington D.C. Vanity is a masculine word.’

Of course, the text is only the beginning. Curnoe’s drawings don’t just illustrate McFadden’s writing – they comment on it, interact with it, riff on it. They’re just plain brilliant in their own right. The Sonnet has been missing from Canada’s literary landscape for too long, and we’re thrilled to return it to its rightful place in the canon.