Wendy Cope discusses how the urge to improve her writing led to her first poetry collection being published
© Caroline Forbes
Wendy Cope is an award-winning poet, with contributions published in a large number of anthologies as well as in her own collections. Her first collection, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was published by Faber and Faber in 1986. In 1998, she was the BBC Radio 4 listeners’ choice to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate, and she was a popular choice to take on the role after Andrew Motion’s term ended in 2009. In previous incarnations she worked as a teacher and a journalist. Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems, 1979-2006 brings a selection of Wendy’s poems together with her thoughts on her work.
What inspired you to become a writer?
When I was seven or eight years old, I decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I suppose it was because I liked reading so much. I wrote stories in my spare time.
When I was a bit older I gave up on the idea and forgot all about it until I was 27. There were three reasons I came back to it. Firstly, the creative work I was doing as a primary school teacher woke up the creative side of me. Secondly, I was living alone for the first time and had no one to talk to at home. Thirdly, I was in psychoanalysis, getting in touch with some powerful feelings, and I needed a way to express them.
How did you make the transition from teaching to journalism to poetry?
I began writing poems while I was a teacher. After some of them got published I was asked to do some reviewing.
Those pieces helped me get seconded to a job on ILEA Contact, the teachers’ newspaper. That job lasted two years. By then I was being invited to do a few readings and courses, so I went back to teaching part-time until my first book, Across the City, was published.
After that I was offered so much work as a poet that there wasn’t time to go to school, so I packed it in.
How do you feel your previous careers benefited your writing?
A primary school teacher needs to be able to explain things clearly. If the pupils don’t understand, you have to find another way of putting it. I think this was good for my writing.
What was your first published poem about?
It is called “Sisters” and it’s about me and my sister Marian. It isn’t in any of my collections. Fleur Adcock used it in a publication called “Pen Broadsheet”.
How would you describe your writing style?
Clear and comprehensible.
Did you face much rejection initially?
I sent out poems for six years without getting anywhere. I decided I wanted to get better at writing for its own sake, even if I never got published. And I believe it has to be like that.
A person who is more interested in getting published than in improving probably won’t get anywhere.
In 1988 and again this year you were a popular choice for the Poet Laureate. How would you respond if you were offered the role?
I don’t want it.
What do you find the most challenging aspect of writing poetry?
Having a good idea for a poem. If I’ve got a good starting point, I can usually make it work.
What do you enjoy most about it?
Working on a poem, when it is going well, is just about the best thing in life.
Whose writing do you admire?
A.E.Housman. George Herbert. John Clare. Shakespeare. Emily Dickinson. Edna St Vincent Millay. Philip Larkin. Tony Harrison. Fleur Adcock. Kit Wright. James Fenton. Sophie Hannah. And many other poets. My favourite novelist is Jane Austen.
What inspires you?
Something that happens, or something someone says, or something I read. And occasionally something I see.
Where do you carry out the majority of your writing?
Usually in my study at home, sitting in an armchair, with a hardback notebook and a pencil. But I’ve also written poems in trains and hotel rooms, or made them up in my head while I’m walking, washing-up, waiting for a bus…
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
If you want to be poet, read a lot of poems. If you don’t like reading poems, forget about being a poet.
Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems, 1979-2006
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