Ben Borak's Donjong Heights is the latest book from Norwich's eggbox publishing. A novel-in-verse, it was given it a four star review by Toby Litt in Timeout and the first print run has already sold out, which is a cause for some celebration. So, since Dongjong Heights is written in Russian sonnets, or 'Onegin' stanzas, after Pushkin's similarly structured Eugene Onegin, I'm inviting everyone to try out the form for themselves, and I'll be publishing my favourites in the next edition of the roundtable review.

Here are the rules of the form:

14 lines, iambic tetrameter (one shorter than a Shakespearian sonnet).

The rhyme scheme is as follows, and note that whether the letters are in upper or lower case is of importance - upper case denotes where the rhyme should be masculine (stressed on the final syllable), lower where it should be feminine (stressed on the penultimate syllable):

aBaBccDDeFFeGG

Here's an example from Vladimir Nabokov, it being the first stanza of his poem 'On Translating 'Eugene Onegin':


What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.


I will allow for some variation in the rules, as Borak himself does. Follow this link to read a sample of the book.

To enter, simply post your Russian sonnet as a deviation and note me with the link. No prizes except publication in an online magazine, but I'm not setting a limit on how many I print, so if it's good, it's in!