Romantic love has never been less fashionable in Australian fiction, writes Matt Buchanan.

WHEN Dorothy Porter was first having treatment for cancer four years ago she wrote a poem called Charles Baudelaire's Grave. Its first line reads: How do you bury poet?

'LET him kiss me with kisses of his mouth." The Song of Songs is passionate. It is erotic. It celebrates human sexuality and carries desire to the limits of language. But why is it in the Bible? Neither God nor His people are mentioned in this ancient poem of love,..read more

WITH T-shirts already describing her as "steaming hot Rice" and author Robert Drewe confessing to "Speedo-esque fantasies concerning zippers" in a salacious love poem, Olympic glamour girl Stephanie Rice is a marketer's dream.

Violets are blue. Bad love poems make you hurl. Alicia Wood reports.