2001, Proof copy, Faber and Faber Ltd

Here you can find the uncorrected proof copy of Wendy Cope’s '“If I Don’t Know” from 2001. You will read in each and every poem, how Cope can easily, yet smoothly, beautify the small details of daily life happenings with her touch.

Wendy Cope’s most recent collection, her first since Serious Concerns in 1992, extends her concern with the comedy of the examined life (‘the way we have been, the way we sometimes are’), and imagines those adjustments to the ordinary which would fulfil our futures, or allow us to realize the golden age of five minutes ago, or weigh the ‘out there’ of the present moment, where what is in sight is also out of reach. These are poems of well-tempered yearning, conditional idylls which sing in praise of lying fallow, the creativity of daydream, the yeast of boredom, the truths of intermediacy. Wendy Cope’s formal tact is alertly present – in triolets, rondeaux, villanelles, squibs, epigrams – small forms whose power to disarm goes hand in hand with her characteristically tart ripostes to the way things (usually) are. This collection extends the variousness of her occasions.

Courtesy of Faber

“The comic brilliance and formal skills which propelled Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis and Serious Concerns into the bestseller list are much in evidence here. But a softer, lyrical voice is given more room to develop in poems that are about nostalgia and contentment and the poignancy of having something to lose.”

- Nicola Winter’s words in the letter attached with this proof copy