BARDCODE translates all of Shakespeare’s sonnets into breathtaking array of stained-glass windows. Produced in a limited edition of 154 copies (the same number as the number of sonnets Shakespeare wrote), BARDCODE transforms each sonnet into a suite of coloured squares, each square representing a single syllable in the original poems, and each hue repeating only where the syllables rhyme (both internally and at the end of each line). Betts’ efforts reveal the internal logic and beauty of the sonnets in a way eschews meaning entirely focusing entirely on form, metrics and rhyme – each poem becomes a structure, a gathering of multi-coloured Lego blocks, each suggesting a new way of reading. Breathtakingly beautiful.
(Penteract Press, 2024)