Poetry Thursday - Poem Composed in Santa Barbara by Wendy Cope

Poem composed in Santa Barbara

The poets talk. They talk a lot.
They talk of T. S. Eliot.
One is anti. One is pro.
How hard they think! How much they know!
They're happy. A cicada sings.
We women talk of other things.

in Serious Concerns, faber and faber, 2002 (via)


Wendy Cope (b.1945) read history at St Hilda's College, Oxford. After university, she worked for 15 years as a primary school teacher. Her first book was published in 1986, at which point she became a freelance writer, and she now lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire.

The spines of both my books by Wendy Cope have suffered from sunlight damage - the brown of the covers has been bleached to green. Despite the browning of the paper within, the poems are still fresh and mostly lighthearted. I've turned to them several times for contributions to Poetry Thursday.