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Wendy Cope

b. 1945
Wendy Cope
Stevie McGarrity Alderdice

Wendy Cope was raised in Kent, England, where her parents often recited poetry to her. She earned a BA in history and trained as a teacher at Oxford University. Cope taught in primary schools for many years before publishing her first book of poetry, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986). The collection was an incredible success, selling tens of thousands of copies in the UK. It also announced Cope’s remarkable talents for parody, word play, dexterity with received forms, and the use of humor to address grave topics. In the Los Angeles Review of Books, critic and poet A.M. Juster declared, “one has to go back to Byron to find a poet as consistently witty, wide-ranging, and technically outstanding as Cope.”

Cope’s poetry collections include Serious Concerns (1992); If I Don’t Know (2001), shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award; Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems 1979–2006 (2008); Family Values (2011); Christmas Poems (2017), a collection of new and previously published Christmas-themed work; and Anecdotal Evidence (2018). She is the author of the prose collection Life, Love and the Archers (2015) and two books for children, Twiddling Your Thumbs (1988) and The River Girl (1991), and the editor of numerous anthologies, including, The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories (1999).

Cope has received a Cholmondeley Award and a Michael Braude Award for Light Verse from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010, she was awarded an Order of the British Empire. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Winchester, England.

Poems by Wendy Cope
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Bibliography

WRITINGS:

  • Across the City, Priapus Press (Berkhamsted, England), 1980.
  • Shall I Call Thee Bard? A Portrait of Jason Strugnell (radio drama), British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio 3 (London, England), 1982.
  • Hope and the Forty-two, Other Branch Readings (Leamington Spa, England), 1984.
  • Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (poems), Faber & Faber (Boston, MA), 1986.
  • Poem from a Colour Chart of House Paints, Priapus Press (Berkhamsted, England), 1987.
  • Does She Like Word-Games? (poems), Anvil Press Poetry (London, England), 1988.
  • Men and Their Boring Arguments (poems), Wykeham Press (Winchester, England), 1988.
  • Twiddling Your Thumbs: Hand Rhymes (for children), illustrated by Sally Kindberg, Faber & Faber (Boston, MA), 1988.
  • The River Girl (poem), illustrations by Nicholas Garland, Faber & Faber (Boston, MA), 1991.
  • Serious Concerns (poems), Faber & Faber (Boston, MA), 1992.
  • The Squirrel and the Crow, illustrated by John Vernon Lord, Clarion Publishing (Alton, England), 1994.
  • Being Boring, Aralia Press (West Chester, PA), 1998.
  • If I Don't Know, Faber (Boston, MA), 2001.

EDITOR

  • Is That the New Moon?: Poems by Women Poets, illustrations by Christine Roche, Lions (London, England), 1989.
  • The Orchard Book of Funny Poems (anthology for children), illustrated by Amanda Vesey, Orchard Books (London, England), 1993.
  • The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1998.
  • The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1999.
  • Heaven on Earth: 101 Happy Poems, Faber & Faber (London, England), 2001.

MUSICAL COLLABORATIONS

  • (With Colin Matthews) Strugnell's Haiku: For Voice and Piano, Faber Music (London, England), 1990.
  • (With Roderik de Man) 5 Songs on Poems by Wendy Cope: For Mezzo-Soprano and Piano, Donemus (Amsterdam, Holland), 1990.
  • (With Martin Read) The Christmas Life, Banks Music (York, England), 1999, reprinted with coauthor Roxanne Panufnik, Universal Edition (Vienna), 2002.

Has recorded several audiocassette versions of her work, including Two Cures for Love: A Collection of Poems Introduced and Read by the Poet, Faber & Faber Audio Poetry (London, England), 1994; (with Samantha Bond and Tim Pigott-Smith) The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems, Penguin Audiobooks (London, England), 1998. Contributor to anthologies, including Spring Offensive, Star Wheel Press (Hitchin, England), 1981; Poetry Introduction 5, Faber & Faber (Boston, MA), 1982; Making for the Open, Chatto & Windus (London, England); The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Women's Poetry, edited by Fleur Adcock, Faber & Faber (Boston, MA); Faber Book of Parodies (Boston, MA), and The Penguin Book of Limericks, Penguin (New York, NY). Contributor of poems and book reviews to periodicals, including Times Literary Supplement, Observer, New Statesman, and London Review of Books; contributor of poems to radio programs, including Poetry Now, BBC Radio 3, Rollercoaster, BBC Radio 4, and Pick of the Week, BBC Radio 4.