How many ways are there to say “I love you”?
 
According to poetry there are many – with room for humour, longing, lust, tenderness and a healthy dose of self-mockery.
 
These fourteen poems are not about love but declare it with an immediacy that’s captivating and irresistible. Longing may be expressed using all sorts of images – there’s even a riff on a famous Shakespeare sonnet where we find ourselves in outer space – but at the heart of all the poems is love and the urgent need to proclaim it:
 
“I love your eyes when the lovelight lies
Lit with a passionate fire.”
from ‘I Love You’ by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 
This is an anthology that says “I love you” with a freshness and directness that’s guaranteed to stir even the stoniest of hearts.
 
Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Katharine Goda, Nathalie Handal, Christopher Marlowe, Mary Mulholland, James Nash, Ogden Nash, Abigail Parry, Rachel Plummer, William Shakespeare, Penny Sharman, Dominic Weston and Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
 
Cover illustration by Clare Curtis.