Tracey Emin: Love Poem

The written word is central to Tracey Emin’s famously candid and confessional art. Poetic texts—always in her distinctive scrawling handwriting—appear in her neon works, monoprints, etchings, and editions. The idiosyncratic script enforces the emotional tenor of her work, which ranges from fragile and sweet to strong and impassioned.

The text embroidered on Love Poem is one that the artist has revisited throughout her career. Written in the late 1990s, it was used in her first neon artwork, Love Poem for CF, the centerpiece of her breakthrough solo exhibition at the South London Gallery in 1997.

“Poetry can be one line, a sentence. When you read the words, you imagine what you’re seeing, you’re given a sense of vision by the words,” the artist has commented.