Wendy Cope | Collected Poems
Sun 23 Nov 2025 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Wendy Cope is that rarest of writers: a poet who is both critically acclaimed and a true bestseller. Since the publication of her first collection Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis in 1986, she has won countless admirers with her wit, clarity and emotional honesty. A whole new generation of readers discovered her when her much-loved poem The Orange went viral.
Now, for the first time, all her work is gathered in one definitive volume, Collected Poems. Across these pages, Cope explores our deepest longings and anxieties – love and disappointment, humour and heartache, as well as a hard-won belief in the possibility of happiness.
Join us to celebrate the remarkable career of one of Britain’s most beloved poets.
In conversation with Alex Clark
Venue: TTP Stage (Cambridge Union)
Duration: 1 hour
Tickets available soon.
Author Biography
Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent. After university she worked for fifteen years as a primary school teacher in London. Her first collection of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was published in 1986 and her most recent, Anecdotal Evidence, in 2018. In 1987 she received a Cholmondeley Award for poetry and in 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award. Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems 1979-2006 was published in 2008. The Orange and other poems was published in 2023.
Chair Biography
Alex Clark is a broadcaster and journalist, who writes for many publications including the Guardian, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is a co-host on the Graham Norton Book Club for Audible and hosts the TLS podcast. She is a professional chairperson and appears all over the UK at Edinburgh, Hay and the Southbank Centre. Alex is a festival honorary patron.
