The poems gathered here were composed by Donald Davie for his wife Doreen, to whom he was married and devoted for fifty years. The earliest of them were copied out by hand and presented to Doreen as a tribute on the occasion of her 54th birthday, and this "garland" was then added to over the years. Of the 43 poems, ten are published here for the first time, two others in new versions. They span the five decades of the couple's marriage, and because of this portray an enduring but complex relationship as it changes over time.
To some readers the poems will seem unusual as love poems because they do not idealize love and marriage. Their strength lies in their honesty and intimacy and in the openness to the pain and self-understanding that both ardor and conflict ("We, we throve on friction") can produce. This is a relationship in which each knows the other too well to be assuaged by a sentimental lyricism.
For this special edition, twelve of Doreen's photographs from their travels together have been included, so that her sensibility may be present, too, as an artist in her own right. Donald's handwritten poems are reproduced both in facsimile and in type.