Love from Wales

'Who made an ache under my rib?'. Asks the poet on the first page of Love from Wales, and just what makes the Welsh a passionate race? This new selection of poetry and prose on the theme of love by Welsh poet Tony Curtis and novelist Sian James offers some lively answers. Love from Wales features extracts from novels and short stories, as well as complete poems and letters, ranging from the eleventh century to the present. The book includes many translations from the original Welsh. We begin in the Spring section, with the awkward adolescents of Dylan Thomas's Extraordinary Little Cough and Dannie Abse's Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve, then move towards the full Summer love of Gillian Clarke's Choughs who 'mate for life' and John Ormond's lovely poem to his wife, Design for a Quilt.