At the heart of A Living Shakespeare

is the belief that contemporary poetry can bring us into an encounter with Shakespeare that has new and genuine vitality. Shakespeare himself predicted that language would change and his poems would lose their modernity, but asked that we continue to read them not for their "style" but for their "love." Luke William's poems, coupled here with Shakespeare's, breathe life into the sonnets and awaken fresh desire to become truly intimate with these works of art.