Small Poems for Small Bears: A Sonnet Cycle of the 100 Acre Wood
Title and/or Affiliation
Independent Scholar and Poet
Presenter Bio
Scott Ennis is a published poet/lyricist who has written more sonnets than Shakespeare.
Session
Lyrical Tributes
Start Date
10-7-2026 4:45 PM
End Date
10-7-2026 6:15 PM
Abstract
This presentation introduces Small Poems for Small Bears, a sonnet cycle that reimagines the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood through the constraints and possibilities of one of English literature’s most formal poetic structures. Drawing on Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne and the enduring visual and emotional world shaped by E. H. Shepard, the project asks what happens when characters associated with childhood spontaneity, wandering conversation, and gentle philosophical play are translated into the measured architecture of the sonnet.
Through selected readings and brief critical commentary, this presentation explores how poetic form can both preserve and complicate the pleasures of Pooh. Individual sonnets attend to voice, memory, appetite, anxiety, friendship, and the small rituals that define life in the Wood, while the cycle as a whole considers questions of literary adaptation, tonal inheritance, and the relationship between childlike wonder and formal discipline. By placing Pooh and his companions within a tradition more commonly associated with love, loss, and contemplation, Small Poems for Small Bears invites audiences to encounter familiar figures in newly resonant ways.
Small Poems for Small Bears: A Sonnet Cycle of the 100 Acre Wood
This presentation introduces Small Poems for Small Bears, a sonnet cycle that reimagines the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood through the constraints and possibilities of one of English literature’s most formal poetic structures. Drawing on Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne and the enduring visual and emotional world shaped by E. H. Shepard, the project asks what happens when characters associated with childhood spontaneity, wandering conversation, and gentle philosophical play are translated into the measured architecture of the sonnet.
Through selected readings and brief critical commentary, this presentation explores how poetic form can both preserve and complicate the pleasures of Pooh. Individual sonnets attend to voice, memory, appetite, anxiety, friendship, and the small rituals that define life in the Wood, while the cycle as a whole considers questions of literary adaptation, tonal inheritance, and the relationship between childlike wonder and formal discipline. By placing Pooh and his companions within a tradition more commonly associated with love, loss, and contemplation, Small Poems for Small Bears invites audiences to encounter familiar figures in newly resonant ways.