Poet Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent in 1945 and read History at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She trained as a teacher at Westminster College of Education, Oxford, and taught in primary schools in London (1967-81 and 1984-6). She became Arts and Reviews editor for Contact, the Inner London Education Authority magazine, and continued to teach part-time, before becoming a freelance writer in 1986. She was television critic for The Spectator magazine until 1990.
She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1987 and was awarded the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse (American Academy of Arts and Letters) in 1995. Her poetry collections include Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986), Serious Concerns (1992) and If I Don't Know (2001), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. She has edited a number of poetry anthologies including The Orchard Book of Funny Poems (1993), Is That The New Moon? (1989), The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems (1998) and The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories (1999) and Heaven on Earth: 101 Happy Poems (2001). She is also the author of two books for children, Twiddling Your Thumbs (1988) and The River Girl (1991).
Wendy Cope is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Winchester, England. In 1998 she was the listeners' choice in a BBC Radio 4 poll to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate.
Her latest book, Two Cures for Love (2008) is a selection of previous poems with notes, together with new poems. Buy Wendy Cope's books from Blackwells
Wendy Cope Reads
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 Poetry, 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 (selecton)
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