For as long as we have communicated by words, men and women have turned to poets to help them express the surges of emotion that accompany the feelings we call romantic love. Recognizing that love’s domain is as huge, as vast as Canada itself, acclaimed poet Tom Wayman set out in 1997 to compile an anthology of the nation’s best poetry on the subject - the result is The Dominion of Love.

The Dominion of Love is a collection of poems by fifty of Canada’s top writers, including Margaret Atwood, Earle Birney, Marilyn Bowering, Leonard Cohen, Lorna Crozier, Joy Kogawa, Patrick Lane, Dorothy Livesay, Susan Musgrave, Michael Ondaatje, Al Purdy, Shannon Stewart, Phyllis Webb, Howard White and Patricia Young. Strikingly perceptive, literary and passionate, these poems explore the landscape of love and romance. They map the complexities of first love, eroticism and marriage all while avoiding the effusive sentimentality that often accompanies this genre.

The Dominion of Love is divided into four sections: You Have the Lovers, which explores the breathless wonder we experience when we first fall in love; In Darkness We Find Each Other, which celebrates the curious fact that love often does best at night; Running to Surrender, which praises long-term relationships; and Away with Words, two poems that explore the tangled links between love and the language we use to express it.

My hope is that the poems of this anthology will help make anyone’s journey across love’s provinces and territories more sure-footed, cheerful, exciting, successful, writes Wayman in his introduction. Those who have written about where we journey provide us with the same benefits of any national literature - an expanded sense of place, and a deeper perception of those who inhabit this country.