Poetry Bookshop Online

Gift Ideas - Love Poetry

Poetry books make ideal gifts for both aficionados as well as for those coming to poetry fresh or hoping to re-kindle a love for the genre diminished by the pace of modern living. Reading poetry creates a space in the hustle-bustle; it provokes thought; it makes us look anew at the everyday things that we encounter and it can amuse and entertain.

On the following pages, we have attempted to provide you with a range of gift-buying options - a selection of books of love poetry that will make the recipient go weak at the knees; half-a-dozen beautiful collections of the work of some of the greatest and best-loved poets of the 20th century; some of the best of recently published contemporary poetry; a selection of anthologies showcasing the finest English poetry; the work of the much-loved Romantic poets and a smile-inducing selection of books of humorous verse.

Make someone happy - buy them some poetry.

• The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
  William Shakespeare
  Penguin Classics
  £7.99

William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets are amongst the most haunting poems ever written. Dealing with eternal themes and the tangled nature of desire - both heterosexual and homosexual - they are published in their entirety in this volume along with the Bard's narrative poem A Lover's Complaint in which a young woman bemoans her fate at the hands of a treacherous lover.

• Love Poems
  Carol Ann Duffy
  Picador
  £12.99

34 poems about love from the current Poet Laureate, detailing the desire, heartbreak, joy, passion and despair engendered by love. Duffy writes with tenderness, stunning imagination and captivating directness. A superb poet at the height of her extraordinary powers.

• Two For Joy
  Dannie Absie
  Hutchinson
  £15

Having marked the tragic death of his wife of fifty years in the memoir The Presence in 2008, Dannie Abse now celebrates his marriage in this poignant new collection. A paean to ordinary married life, Two for Joy is both joyous and tender, considered and passionate. Above all, it is a celebration of the transformative nature of love.

• The Nation's Favourite Love Poems
  ed. Daisy Goodwin
  BBC Books
  Paperback
  £7.99

The nation's 100 favourite love poems as voted for by BBC Radio's Bookworm programme. From Elizabeth Barrett Browning (‘How do I love thee' was voted number one) to Carol Ann Duffy and Wendy Cope, stopping off at Wordsworth, Keats, Donne, Shakespeare et al on the way.

• Penguin's Poems For Love
  ed. Laura Barber
  Penguin Classics
  £20

An elegantly produced volume of love poems for every occasion, incorporating much-loved work by poets through the ages - from W H Auden to William Shakespeare, John Donne to Emily Dickinson, Robert Browning to Roger McGough.

• A Scattering
  Christopher Reid
  Arete
  £7.99

Christopher Reid's elegy to his late wife, Lucinda Gane, won the prestigious Costa Book Prize in January 2010. Consisting of four sequences of poems, one written during her illness, the others following her death, it is a heartbreaking, unsentimental and searingly personal collection.

• The New Faber Book of Love Poems
  James Fenton
  Faber
  £9.99

The greatest lyric poems in the English language anthologised by Whitbread Prize-winning poet, James Fenton. Not only does Fenton include the love poems we all know and love, he also features song lyrics, from the Elizabethan age to the blues and the Broadway musical of the 20th century. A fascinating trawl through the language of love.



Gordon Kerr has worked in marketing and branding for Waterstones and Oddbins. He is the author of more than 30 books in the areas of art, history, poetry, travel, humour and crime.



We have a range of poetry gift guides to suit every taste. Why not check out collected poetry, contemporary poetry, anthologies, Romantic poetry and humorous poetry?