We’re coming up to Valentine’s and perhaps inspired by the fact I watched the Sex & the City Movie again which sees Carrie reading a book Love Letters from Great Men, I googled the topic and enjoyed a few minutes perusing a few of such amorous letters posted on the internet.

I can’t help but share this one, written by Dylan Thomas to his wife Caitlin, simply because I noted it was written whilst on a book tour in America. As a publicist whose job sometimes involves sending authors on book tours, I hate to imagine I could be instigating such heart-ache…

March 16, 1950

Cat: my cat: If only you would write to me: My love, oh Cat.

This is not, as it seems from the address above, a dive, a joint, saloon, etc.  but the honourable & dignified headquarters of the dons of the University of Chicago.

I love you.  That is all I know.  But all I know, too, is that I am writing into space: the kind of dreadful, unknown space I am just going to enter.  I am going to Iowa, Illinois, Idaho, Indindiana, but these, though mis-spelt, *are* on the map.  You are not.

Have you forgotten me?  I am the man you used to say you loved.  I used to sleep in your arms – do you remember?  But you never write. You are perhaps mindless of me.  I am not of you.  I love you.

There isn’t a moment of any hideous day when I do not say to myself. ‘It will be alright.  I shall go home.  Caitlin loves me.  I love Caitlin.’  But perhaps you have forgotten.  If you have forgotten, or lost your affection for me, please, my Cat, let me know.  I Love You.

Dylan

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager