"I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots." -- Wendy Cope
Wendy Cope, OBE (born 21 July 1945) is an award-winning contemporary English poet. She read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She now lives in Winchester with the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.
"Bloody Christmas, here again, let us raise a loving cup, peace on earth, goodwill to men, and make them do the washing up.""Bloody men are like bloody buses - you wait for about a year and as soon as one approaches your stop two or three others appear."
Cope was born in Erith, Kent, and educated at Farringtons School, Chislehurst, London. Following her graduation from St Hilda's College, Cope spent fifteen years as a primary-school teacher. In 1981, she became Arts and Reviews editor for the Inner London Education Authority magazine, Contact. Five years later she became a freelance writer and was a television critic for The Spectator magazine until 1990.
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. She has also edited several anthologies of comic verse and was a judge of the 2007 Man Booker Prize.
In 1998, she was voted the listeners' choice in a BBC Radio 4 poll to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate. When Andrew Motion's term as Poet Laureate came to an end in 2009, Cope was again widely considered a popular candidate, although she believes the post should be discontinued. Carol Ann Duffy succeeded Motion as Poet Laureate.
Her portrait was painted by Peter Edwards.
She also writes for The Oldie.
Cope was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.
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 winning two awards and making an award shortlist over a fourteen year period.
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.
Dr Rowan Williams is a well known fan of her work, writing that: "Wendy Cope is without doubt the wittiest of contemporary English poets, and says a lot of extremely serious things".
In 2008 Cope's poem "After The Lunch" was used as the lyric of the song "On Waterloo Bridge" by jazz composer and musician Jools Holland and singer Louise Marshall.
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 hersWe swapped last Tuesday and felt quite elatedBut now whenever one of us refersTo 'my heart' things get rather complicated.
to reducing T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land to limerick:
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.
Her style has been compared to that of John Betjeman and Philip Larkin.
