Buccaneers, Sonneteers and Spittoons: sonnets for the unhinged The latest book by John Irvine is a collection of Sonnets. He has been running a writer's forum for more than 10 years on the Internet and during that time he has had some remarkable writers join him. Gary Leon Johnson, who designed the title, told John that he'd love to get some of his poetry published one day. Mike Spearing, although a sometimes brilliant writer, had never pursued publication. Curiously, the three degenerates seem to favour the sonnet as a poetical style. This selection of sonnets is written in traditional format, but be warned: they do not contain traditional subjects. The title and subtitle will lead the observant reader into the tunnel of madness: Buccaneers, Sonneteers and Spittoons: sonnets for the unhinged. If you want to know what the title means and why spittoons are included you will have to track Gary down somewhere in the America heartland and ply him with Absinthe for an answer. The subtitle was the best I could come up with. Mike was asleep at the time and we didn't bother waking him. So: what is it that we have done here? And what sort of publisher has doomed his corporate future by agreeing to publish this clever insanity? Well, although say it myself what we have achieved here is unique. Utterly so. Most sonnet poets are caught in the gluey soup of daffodils and unrequited love. Not us, dear reader. We're out there flying with the genuine Underworld, painting word pictures about death, sex, goddesses, pixies and angels. Plus other stuff I have no names for. I mean, I don't understand some of the content myself, and I'm the editor. God only knows what the publisher must think. So, my dear unknowable friends, I beg you to do yourselves a favour and buy this delightfully wicked collection. By the year 2025 it will be worth a lot more than today. The poets will all be dead with any luck and the publisher will have become rich and famous as a result of this book. And guess what? Gary, Mike and John are already planning a follow-up collection. How lucky are you all! Not sonnets this time, but any kind of style that happens to infest the brains of any of us while doing our detentions in various institutions at the time. Alea iacta est!