The idea for this selection grew out of Wendy Cope's performances and encounters with audiences – in schools and at readings – and her sense that it might be useful for readers to have an edition which identifies the ingredients of the poems: their parodies and allusions, their rich variety of verse forms (ballades, villanelles, triolets, couplets . . .), together with the contexts and occasions of her poetry. The result is a sparkling miscellany, bringing together for the first time the best of Cope, in a wholly new arrangement which attends to the inner story rather than the external chronology of publication. The notes identify dates of composition, nonetheless, so that readers can gain a sense of the progress and development of her work. Drawing on Wendy Cope's three published collections to date, Two Cures for Love also includes previously uncollected poems, both old and new.
Author
Wendy Cope was educated at Farringtons School, Chislehurst, London and then, after finishing university at St Hilda's College, Oxford, she worked for 15 years as a primary school teacher in London. 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. Her first published work 'Across the City' was in a limited edition, published by the Priapus Press in 1980 and her first commercial book of poetry was 'Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis' in 1986. Since then she has published two further books of poetry and has edited various anthologies of comic verse. 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. In 2007 she was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize. In 1998 she was the BBC Radio 4 listeners' choice to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate and when Andrew Motion's term of office ended in 2009 she was once again considered as a replacement. She was awarded the OBE in the Queen's 2010 Birthday Honours List. Gerry Wolstenholme February 2011
