Most of us can remember our first kiss, whether it was glorious and transporting or merely awkward. Kissing, it transpires, can happen anywhere – on a train, in a city park or against a kitchen fridge.
 
The poems dramatise the fact that a kiss can make time stand still or send us into a dizzy spin:
“And the world all whirling
Round in joy
Like the dance of a dervish…”
from ‘Kisses in the Train’ by DH Lawrence
 
The selection wouldn’t be complete without a sly antidote to all this romance, which is why we’ve included Mary Ruefle’s ‘Why I Am Not A Good Kisser’ with its inventory of things not to do or think about when a kiss is in the offing.
 
Poems by Kim Addonizio, Marjorie Allen Seiffert, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, William Drummond of Hawthornden, Hattie Grünewald, DH Lawrence, Roddy Lumsden, David Mills, Shazea Quraishi, Mary Ruefle, Roberta Spear, Sara Teasdale and Jean Toomer.
 
Cover illustration by Sara Boccaccini Meadows.