Wendy Cope

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Wendy Cope (born 21 July 1945) is a contemporary English poet. Born in Erith, south-east London, she was educated at Farringtons School and went on to read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Winchester with the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.

Three books of her poetry have been published (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis in 1986, Serious Concerns in 1992 and If I Don't Know in 2001), and she has edited several anthologies of comic verse. She won the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse in 1995, and If I Don't Know (dedicated to Lachlan Mackinnon) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2001.

Despite her slight output, her books have sold well and she has attracted a popular following with her lighthearted, often comical poetry, as well as achieving literary credibility. She has a keen eye for the everyday, mundane aspects of English life, especially the desires, frustrations, hopes, confusions and emotions in intimate relationships. The bathetic aspect to her work has led to comparisons with Philip Larkin, although her work evidences a genuine warmth and affection for humanity in contrast to his ennui.

Some of her poems are written in the persona of a struggling male poet, Jake Strugnell, a slightly seedy figure from Tulse Hill. She displays her talent for parody with targets ranging from the sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney:

My true love hath my heart and I have hers
We swapped last Tuesday and felt quite elated
But now whenever one of us refers
To 'my heart' things get rather complicated.

to reducing T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land to limericks:

In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyants distress me,
Commuters depress me—
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

[edit] Bibliography

Across the City Priapus Press (limited edition), 1980
Hope and the 42 Other Branch Readings, 1984
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis Faber and Faber, 1986
Poem from a Colour Chart of House Paints (limited edition) Priapus Press, 1986
Does She Like Word Games? Anvil Press, 1988
Men and Their Boring Arguments Wykeham, 1988
Twiddling Your Thumbs Faber and Faber, 1988
Is That the New Moon? (editor) HarperCollins, 1989
The River Girl Faber and Faber, 1991
Serious Concerns Faber and Faber, 1992
The Faber Book of Drink, Drinkers and Drinking (contributor) Faber and Faber, 1993
The Orchard Book of Funny Poems (editor) Orchard, 1993
The Squirrel and the Crow Prospero Poets, 1994
Poems 1 (contributor) Addison Wesley Longman, 1995
Another Day on Your Foot and I Would Have Died (contributor) Macmillan, 1996
Casting a Spell (contributor) Faber and Faber, 1996
Marigolds Grow Wild on Platforms: An Anthology of Railway Poetry (contributor) Ward Lock, 1996
Over the Moon: Championship Football Poems (contributor) Red Fox, 1996
A Draft of XXX Cantos (contributor) Faber and Faber, 1997
Dear Future: A Time Capsule of Poems (contributor) Hodder & Stoughton, 1997
Evergreen Verse (contributor) Dent, 1997
For All Occasions (contributor) Methuen, 1997
Funnybones (contributor) CollinsEducational, 1998
Silly Bones (contributor) Scholastic, 1998
The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems (editor) Faber and Faber, 1998
The Epic Poise: A Celebration of Ted Hughes (contributor) Faber and Faber, 1999
The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories (editor) Faber and Faber, 1999
Big Orchard Book of Funny Poems (editor) Orchard, 2000
Heaven on Earth: 101 Happy Poems (editor) Faber and Faber, 2001
If I Don't Know Faber and Faber, 2001
Is That The New Moon?: Poems by Women Poets (selector) Collins, 2002
George Herbert: Verse and Prose (selector and introduction) SPCK, 2003