Julia Copus (born 16 July 1969 in London) is a British poet and radio dramatist.[1][2]
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Copus' books of poetry include The Shuttered Eye (1995), which won her an Eric Gregory Award and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and In Defence of Adultery (2003).[1] Both collections are Poetry Book Society Recommendations.
Eenie Meenie Macka Racka (an original 45-minute play for radio) was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September, 2003, having been commissioned after Copus won the BBC's Alfred Bradley Bursary Award for Best New Radio Playwright in 2002. In the same year she won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition with Breaking the Rule.
In 2001, she received writing awards from the Arts Council of England and the Authors’ Foundation, and in 2003, she collaborated with sculptor Stephen Broadbent to produce a poem inscribed on a bronze bench and sculpture in Fleming Square, Blackburn.
In the summer of 2004, Copus was commissioned to write a poem for St. Dunstan's, Brighton, as part of the Architexts project, administered by David Kendall for the Arts Council. She was awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at the University of Exeter in 2005, 2006 and 2007. The following year she was made an RLF Advisory Fellow and awarded an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Exeter. In 2010, she won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for An Easy Passage.
A concise writing guide for undergraduates called "Essential Writing Tips" was published by Macmillan in July 2009, and has subsequently been made into an audiobook. Her third poetry collection, "The World's Two Smallest Humans", is due from Faber in the summer of 2012.
A new sequence of poems for radio, Ghost Lines, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December 2011.