Love, Hate and My Best Mate: poems about relationships

Love is still considered one of the primary topics of poetry. Love sells and so will this book. It looks attractive but I found some of the fonts used often detracted from the text. This collection tries hard to be inclusive with about two thirds of the poetry by men to a third women, a few translations thrown in, some parodies and a couple of poems by young people. But it isn’t a great collection and it has neither the skilled selection that makes collections like McGough’s Poems about Love stunning nor the surprises that Matthew Sweeney throws into his collections. Brian Patten and Clare Bevan’s love poems did charm me. But I finished reading this book wondering where were the great earlier women’s voices (other than Emily), where were the big contemporary love poets, how many of their own poems should editors include in their anthologies and who the hell is Loveyday Why?