Book description
Wendy Cope's most recent collection, her first since Serious
Concerns in 1992, extends her concern with the comedy of the examined
life ('the way we have been, the way we sometimes are'), and imagines
those adjustments to the ordinary which would fulfil our futures, or
allow us to realize the golden age of five minutes ago, or weigh the
'out there' of the present moment, where what is in sight is also out
of reach. These are poems of well-tempered yearning, conditional
idylls which sing in praise of lying fallow, the creativity of
daydream, the yeast of boredom, the truths of intermediacy. Wendy
Cope's formal tact is alertly present - in triolets, rondeaux,
villanelles, squibs, epigrams - small forms whose power to disarm goes
hand in hand with her characteristically tart ripostes to the way
things (usually) are. This collection extends the variousness of her occasions.
Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent. After university she worked for
fifteen years as a primary-school teacher in London. Her first
collection of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was published in
1986. In 1987 she received a Cholmondeley Award for poetry and in 1995
the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award for light
verse. Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems 1979-2006 was published in
2008.
