A Review By Keith Smith

From a motorway service area to her ambivalent relationship with religion, Wendy Cope covers a wide range of experience in her new collection. Her mordant humour and formal ingenuity are in evidence, even as she remembers the wounds of a damaging childhood; and in poems about love and the inevitable problems of aging she achieves an intriguing blend of sadness and joy. Two very different sets of commissioned poems round off a remarkable volume, whose opening poem sounds clearly the profound note of compassion which underlies the whole.

Personally I’m not a great reader of poetry, a lot of which I think is poor or pretentious. I make exceptions for brilliant poetry like ‘The Rhyme Of  The Ancient Mariner’ or Dylan Thomas.  But Faber gave me this book to look at and I was taken. Unassuming, clever, deep and funny by turns, this is poetry that everyman can read and enjoy. What more can I say? I do recommend it.