“I accidentally wrote a sonnet,” I told my husband, when he returned from the swimming run last night. He laughed, understandably. I hadn’t set out to write anything that evening – he had taken both boys swimming and I was supposed to be sorting washing, hoovering the house, getting things sorted for the working week ahead. But I sat down, first, to read some sonnets a writer friend had sent through – and there it was – inspiration struck! I haven’t written much about grief for a while. Partly, I think, because it isn’t so raw now, so emotions don’t pour from the pen so readily. There is, though, still so much I want to write about it – but I often don’t know where to start, or, scarier still, if I start, where it will end. This is where the sonnet form came into its own. The rhyme, rhythm and structural limits felt like they gave me the relative safety to explore some of my thoughts, whilst, at the same time, constraining them....