A Nottingham Creative Writing Hub at Nottingham Trent University event, in collaboration with Five Leaves

When Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis was published in 1986, Wendy Cope became that rarest of creatures: a celebrated poet who was also a best-seller. Her combination of insight and wit made an extraordinary impact in poems that cocked a gentle snook at the pomposity of a literary world hitherto dominated by men.

Through four further collections, Cope continued to delight her readers while finding a new generation of enthusiasts when her poem ‘The Orange’ went viral. Her poems catalogue the desires and fears that underlie our ordinary existences – love and heartbreak, disappointment and a hard-won capacity to find happiness, even if only in the form of a poem…

This event celebrates her Collected Poems, a lifetime’s achievement by a poet who has been original and distinctive from the start, and provides the perfect accompaniment to the trials, tribulations and joys of our own lives.

Wendy Cope will be known to many readers locally, from the days of Beeston Poets, through to the very first Southwell Poetry Festival, and afternoon tea at Lowdham Book Festival.  We’ll ask her to read what might be the poem of the cover, about the flowers that were nearly bought, that have lasted all this while…

Support readers from NTU – Julie Gardner Julie is the author of Remembering, which was published by Five Leaves in September. Sarah Smith is about to graduate from the MA in Creative Writing at NTU.

Doors open 6.15 for a prompt start of the readings at 6.45… and remember this event is at the Central Library not the bookshop!

Bar available from 6.15 and at the break