‘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, which became a classic of modern poetry. Portable Kisses was 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 was followed by this Bloodaxe edition of the most travelled kisses in poetry since Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair including all the kisses Tess Gallagher has put down on paper.