Description
In this gloriously exuberant anthology, Wendy Cope sets out to prove that misery doesn't have all the best lines. Here is a collection of poems which are unashamedly happy: poems about love, places, the beauty of the natural world, about company and solitude, music, food and drink, books, and the unadulterated pleasure of taking a shower.
Among the more surprising items are the Chinese Po Chu-I on the advantages of baldness, the eighteenth-century John Dyer on the kindly behaviour of his ox, and an unusually cheerful Thomas Hardy enjoying the sight of seven women laughing as they stagger, arm in arm, down an icy hill. Catullus, Chaucer, Clare, Dickinson, Betjeman and Larkin are among the contributors who help to demonstrate that people who believe that 'happiness writes white' have got it wrong.
Heaven on Earth: 101 Happy Poems by Wendy Cope is a poetry anthology with a point to prove, and Cope demonstrates amply the joy and gladness that poetry can bring so vividly to life.
About the Author
Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent. After university she worked for fifteen years as a primary-school teacher in London. Her first collection of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was published in 1986 and her most recent, Anecdotal Evidence, in 2018. In 1987 she received a Cholmondeley Award for poetry and in 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award. Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems 1979-2006 was published in 2008.
Book Information
ISBN 9780571207060
Author Wendy Cope
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 166g
Dimensions(mm) 199mm * 130mm * 10mm