funny poems

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), and she has edited several anthologies of comic verse. She won the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse in 1995, and If I Don't Know (dedicated to Lachlan Mackinnon) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2001.

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. 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, although her work evidences a genuine warmth and affection for humanity in contrast to his ennui.

Some of her poems are written in the persona of a struggling male poet, Jason 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 hers
We swapped last Tuesday and felt quite elated
But now whenever one of us refers
To 'my heart' things get rather complicated.

to reducing T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land to limericks:

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.

Bibliography

• 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, 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 (selector and introduction) SPCK, 2003

External links

• Wendy Cope at www.contemporarywriters.com