POETS OF CAMBRIDGE
STANZA STYLE
AHEAD OF NATIONAL POETRY DAY ON 6 OCTOBER, MIRIAM BALANESCU SPEAKS TO SIX CAMBRIDGE-BASED BARDS TO DISCOVER WHAT MAKES THE REGION SO POETIC MASTERS OF THE VERSE
ambridge has long been a touchpoint for poets, from
Wordsworth’s residence recorded in verse (“The long-backed chapel of King’s College rear / His pinnacles above the dusky groves”) to Xu Zhimo’s melancholy departure (“I am willing to be such a waterweed / In the gentle flow of the River Cam”). This legacy shows no sign of faltering, with those of all melodic strains hurrying to this poetic hive. So, what makes it a lure for lyricists? Cambridge’s history has a part to play, but also its inclination towards progression and inventiveness, its rich landscapes and the communities it fosters.
WORDSMITH Wendy Cope is one of the highest-profile poets today
WENDY COPE
childhood, that’s quite liberating,” Wendy says. “Lots of poets are preoccupied with death and go on about it. I mean, Larkin was going on about it from quite an early age.” The collection opens with a moving work on poetry as an insight into human nature. “The important thing about poetry is that it should be telling the truth,” Wendy states. This is an idea that has remained core to her. Now, Wendy is piecing together a complete collection of her work. Though, in the wake of the pandemic, she has settled into a gentler rhythm. “I realised it had become quite stressful travelling around doing readings all the time,” she says. “So, I’m doing a lot less of that – and a lot less of everything. I really like a quiet life.”
“I’m not as funny as I was when I was younger and I think, actually, it’s because I’m less miserable,” Wendy claims. “There’s something about my second, best-selling book, Serious Concerns , which is really quite miserable. There’s a sort of state you can get into where you’re so miserable, you might as well make jokes about it. “I don’t like being dismissed as somebody who is just a comic poet,” Wendy insists. Anecdotal Evidence certainly proves anyone who thinks otherwise wrong, interspersed with poignant contemplations of childhood, fragments of the everyday and reflections on what lies after life. “My parents are both dead now. From the point of view of looking at writing about your
One of the nation’s best-known, most- adored poets is a resident of a town just north of Cambridge. Wendy Cope moved to Ely with her husband around the time of her latest collection, Anecdotal Evidence , enticed by the inexhaustible tomes of the University Library. She has even written a poem named after her new home, dedicated to historian Mac Dowdy. This most recent body of work shows a considerable shift from her first, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, a 1986 collection punctuated with witticisms and satire. “I was going to an evening class where we looked at work by various poets,” recollects Wendy, of her time as a primary school teacher. “I just had the impulse to write parodies of them.
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