Two Cures for Love: Selected Poems 1979-2006Wendy Cope2008

The idea for this selection grew out of Wendy Cope's performances and encounters with audiences – in schools and at readings – and her sense that it might be useful for readers to have an edition which identifies the ingredients of the poems: their parodies and allusions, their rich variety of verse forms (ballades, villanelles, triolets, couplets . . .), together with the contexts and occasions of her poetry.

The result is a sparkling miscellany, bringing together for the first time the best of Cope, in a wholly new arrangement which attends to the inner story rather than the external chronology of publication. The notes identify dates of composition, nonetheless, so that readers can gain a sense of the progress and development of her work.

Drawing on Wendy Cope's three published collections to date, Two Cures for Love also includes previously uncollected poems, both old and new.