‘Ideally, a reader should finish this book, then find someone to kiss.’ – Tess Gallagher

‘This is the best book of love poems since Neruda’s.’ – Bill Knott

‘There are as many nuances and inflections for kisses as there are lips to kiss,’ says American poet Tess Gallagher. And so with these playful, serious and sassy poems about kisses, a whole book devoted to the kiss. Portable Kisses is a book which kept growing. The earliest poems were published in a hand-printed limited edition called Portable Kisses in 1978. But the poems wouldn’t stop, like the best of kisses, and Tess Gallagher published a new Portable Kisses in 1992, followed two years later by Portable Kisses Expanded. This first UK edition of the most travelled kisses in poetry since Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair includes all the kisses Tess Gallagher has put down on paper.