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Vintage Classics Love Poems

These poems take us to the back corridors of Heian Period life and reveal the sexual intrigues that so often occurred under the cover of darkness... the seductive, free-spirited erotic environment unfolds through these sensuous poems

A thousand years later we can read poems that remain absolutely accurate and moving descriptions of our most common and central experiences: love and loss, their reflection in the loveliness and evanescence of the natural world, and the effort to understand better the nature of being

Izumi Shikibu (Author) 
Izumi Shikibu, born c.974, was the daughter of a lord who came to the Heian court to serve a former empress. During her time there she had two prominent love affairs to men who both died, was embroiled in scandal, and was married and divorced. When she married her second husband she accompanied him to his post in the provinces and never returned to court life. She is thought to have died around the age of 60. Her reputation as a poet grew after her death and she is now regarded as one of the outstanding poets of Japanese literature. 
 
Ono no Komachi (Author) 
Ono no Komachi was a legendary figure from the time of her death. Little is known about her life but historians believe Komachi served the Heian court in the middle of the 9th century. She most likely had at least one child. The legend goes that she was not only the outstanding poet of her time but the most beautiful, though the story told in No plays is that she ended her days in poverty and obscurity. 
 
Nikita Gill (Introducer) 
Nikita Gill is a British-Indian writer and artist living in the south of England. With a huge online following, her words have captivated hearts and minds all over the world. Nikita is an ambassador for National Poetry Day and is a regular speaker at literary events. 
 
Instagram: @nikita_gill 
Tumblr: meanwhilepoetry.tumblr.com 
Facebook: @nikitagillwrites 
Twitter: @nktgill

Here is a collection of sexy, brief, fleeting poems about love, lust and longing. They originate from a time in Japanese history where aristocratic women of the Heian court were free to marry and conduct love affairs according to their desires. Education and refinement were so highly valued that the courtly manner of expressing oneself, whether to give condolences for a death, to send back a forgotten fan, or to heighten the anticipation of a lover's visit, was with a poem of just five lines. A convention of secrecy surrounding love affairs fills these verses with palpable emotion. 
 
These vivid and erotic poems express love in all its forms, and do so with amazing economy of words, unforgettable imagery and breath-taking modernity. 
 
INTRODUCED BY NIKITA GILL 
 
'They are full of dreams, of autumns, of lovers known or not yet met, of desire, wonderment, loneliness' Irish Times 
 
Translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani, this is an edition that brings the story of the poems to life with a detailed introduction and notes on the translation.

The Ink Dark Moon

William Shakespeare (Author) William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, and was baptised on 26 April 1564. His father was a glove maker and wool merchant and his mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a well-to-do local land owner. Shakespeare was probably educated in Stratford’s grammar school. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had a daughter the following year and twins in 1585. 
 
Shakespeare’s theatrical life seems to have commenced around 1590. We do know that he was part of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, which was renamed the King’s Company in 1603 when James I succeeded to the throne. The Company acquired interests in two theatres in the Southwark area of London, near the banks of the Thames - the Globe and the Blackfriars. 
 
Shakespeare’s poetry was published before his plays, with two poems appearing in 1593 and 1594, dedicated to his patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Most of Shakespeare’s sonnets were probably written at this time as well. 
 
Records of Shakespeare’s plays begin to appear in 1594, and he produced roughly two a year until around 1611. His earliest plays include Henry VI and Titus Andronicus. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Richard II all date from the mid to late 1590s. Some of his most famous tragedies were written in the early 1600s; these include Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony &amp; Cleopatra. His late plays, often known as the Romances, date from 1608 onwards and include The Tempest. 
 
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. The first collected edition of his works was published in 1623 and is known as ‘the First Folio’. Andrew McMillan (Introducer) Andrew McMillan's first collection, physical, was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award; it also won a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Northern Writers' Award and the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, playtime, won the inaugural Polari Prize, and his most recent collection is pandemonium. McMillan is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Love sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love. 
 
Some appear to be written to a young man, some to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery - why did Shakespeare write them, and to whom? - each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive. 
 
INTRODUCED BY ANDREW McMILLAN 
 
'This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love' Don Paterson, Guardian

Sonnets

His love poems have fuelled romances around the world

He was that rare thing - a public poet, and a great one, held in deep affection by every layer of Chilean society. For the skill that earned him such esteem was his ability to find beauty in ordinary things

Pablo Neruda (Author) Born Neftal-Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in southern Chile in 1904, Pablo Neruda led a life charged with poetic and political activity. His first book, Crepusculario ('Twilight') was published in 1923. The following year, he published Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada ('Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair'), which turned him into a celebrity. 
 
In 1927 he began his long career as a diplomat, serving as Chilean consul in numerous places including Burma, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Mexico and France. He was elected to the Chilean Senate in 1943 but later expelled for being a Communist. In 1952 the government withdrew the order to arrest leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile. For the next twenty-one years, he continued a career that integrated private and public concerns and became known as the people's poet. 
 
During this time, Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He died of leukaemia in Santiago, Chile in 1973. Leo Boix (Introducer) Leo Boix is a Latinx bilingual poet, translator and educator born in Argentina who lives in the UK. He is a recent fellow of The Complete Works, a national mentoring programme aimed at poets from minority backgrounds, which included poets such as Kayo Chingonyi, Sarah Howe and Warsan Shire, among others. His poems have been included in many anthologies, such as Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe), The Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2019-2021 (Eyewear Publishing) and Un Nuevo Sol: British Latinx Writers (flipped eye), and have appeared in POETRY, PN Review, The Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation. Boix is co-director of Invisible Presence, an Arts Council England national scheme to nurture new Latinx writers in the UK. He is a board member of Magma Poetry, co-editor of its Resistencia issue showcasing the best Latinx writing, and an advisory board member of the Poetry Translation Centre in London. He was the recipient of the Bart Wolffe Poetry Prize 2018 and the Keats-Shelley Prize 2019.

This is one of the greatest collections of love poetry ever published. Inspired by Pablo Neruda's youthful relationships and injected with an expressive eroticism, these poems are as accomplished as they are evocative and sensual. First published in 1924 to international acclaim when Neruda was just nineteen, this book is still adored the world over for being one of the most memorable, intense and romantic works of poetry ever written. 
 
It is a work of poetry to be cherished by lovers old and new. The perfect Valentine's Day present. 
 
INTRODUCED BY LEO BOIX 
 
'The poems today remain as urgently gorgeous as freshly picked flowers' Carol Ann Duffy 
 
The Vintage Classics Love Poems series brings together some of the most sensual, heart-breaking and romantic poetry ever written. Working in collaboration with Vintage Creative Director Suzanne Dean this edition has been created by Spanish illustrator Jesús Cisneros.

Vintage Classics Love Poems

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