Award-winning poet Wendy Cope at Poetry East

Internationally award-winning poet Wendy Cope will be talking about her life and work and sharing her much-loved poetry at Poetry East in Bethnal Green.

Poetry East is a new poetry venue at the London Buddhist Centre on Roman Road, showcasing the work of leading UK contemporary poets, and exploring the relationship between poetry and spiritual life.

Wendy Cope is best known for her ready wit. The joke has often been on men from the point of view of the single woman, most famously in ‘Bloody Men’ (Serious Concerns, 1992):

'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.'

Wendy Cope 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, Serious Concerns, and If I Don't Know, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. She has edited a number of poetry anthologies, and is the author of two books for children.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1998 was the listeners' choice in a BBC Radio 4 poll to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate. Her latest collection Family Values was published in 2011 by Faber. She was awarded an OBE in 2010.

“I am very pleased to have Wendy with us at Poetry East. Following Jo Shapcott, Sean O’Brien and Don Paterson, having Wendy Cope read at Poetry East, really shows how the East End is attracting the best of UK poetry.”
- Maitreyabandhu, founder and host of Poetry East.