Julia Copus

Julia Copus Poems

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nerly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
...

We don't fall in love: it rises through us
the way that certain music does -
whether a symphony or ballad -
...

At length we learned what it meant to "come to" grief.
As if grief lay in wait for us all along,
a barricade or boulder in the road.
What was it pulled us to it - led as we were
...

Even human tissue's made of atoms,
bits of energy in cyclic motion:
our skin and cells and vital organs
are a lattice-work of small vibrations,
...

Gather round: I've a tale to tell.
If you've ears to hear, then listen well.

In the frosty lanes of alley cats;
...

More and more, lately, when absence thickened the air
at the schoolgates, in the street, first thing on waking,
she'd think of her former calling, the way it had defined her.
In the dim, sugar-paper blur of the light,
...

aleontologists treasure the rare geological circumstances that permit an occasional preservation of soft parts. - Stephen Jay Gould

Perhaps there is some transcendental place,
...

I. The Art of Illumination

At times it is a good life, with the evening sun
gilding the abbey tower, the brook's cold waters
...

That was the house where you asked me to remain
on the eve of my planned departure. Do you remember?
The house remembers it - the deal table
with the late September sun stretched on its back.
...

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
...

We don't fall in love: it rises through us
the way that certain music does -
whether a symphony or ballad -
and it is sepia-coloured,
...

This is the poem in which I have not left you.
The doors of the Green Dragon are not bolted
behind our backs; the pink-faced landlady
(may she be blessed) has not abandoned us
...

Julia Copus Biography

Julia Copus was born in London, and is a British poet and children's writer. Copus' books of poetry include The Shuttered Eye (Bloodaxe, 1995), which won her an Eric Gregory Award and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, In Defence of Adultery (Bloodaxe, 2003) and The World's Two Smallest Humans (Faber, 2012), shortlisted for both the Costa Book Awards (poetry category) and the T.S. Eliot Prize.[1] All three collections are Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She is known for establishing a new form in English poetry, which she has called the specular form, in which the second half of the poem mirrors the first, using precisely the same lines but in reverse order and differently punctuated. Eenie Meenie Macka Racka (an original 45-minute play for radio) was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September, 2003, having been commissioned after Copus won the BBC's Alfred Bradley Bursary Award for Best New Radio Playwright in 2002. In the same year she won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition with 'Breaking the Rule'. In 2001, she received writing awards from the Arts Council of England and the Authors’ Foundation, and in 2003, she collaborated with sculptor Stephen Broadbent to produce a poem inscribed on a bronze bench and sculpture in Fleming Square, Blackburn. Copus was awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at the University of Exeter in 2005, 2006 and 2007. The following year she was made an RLF Advisory Fellow and awarded an Honorary Fellowship at the University of Exeter. In 2010, she won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for 'An Easy Passage'. A pocket-sized writing guide for undergraduates called Brilliant Writing Tips for Students was published by Palgrave Macmillan in July 2009. A sequence of poems for radio, Ghost Lines, based on a couple's experience of IVF treatment and produced by John Taylor of Fiction Factory, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in December 2011 and shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Copus has also written two picture books: Hog in the Fog (Faber 2014) and The Hog, the Shrew and the Hullabaloo (Faber 2015). Her grandfather is the painter Cecil Bailey, a central member of the Borough Bottega group who studied under David Bomberg.)

The Best Poem Of Julia Copus

The Back Seat of My Mother's Car

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nerly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass;
I was calling to you- Daddy!- as we screeched away into
the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.
You were mouthing something I still remember, the noiseless words
percing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunset
pouring itself out against the sky. The ensuing silence
was the one clear thing I could decipher-
the roar of the eingine dorwing your voice,
with the cool slick glass between us.

With the cool slick glass between us,
the roar of the engine dorwning, your voice
was the one clear thing I could decipher-
pouring itself out against the sky, the ensuing slience
pericing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunset.
You were mouthing something: I still remeber the noiseless words,
the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.
I was calling to you, Daddy, as we screeched away into
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched.
We left before I had time.

Julia Copus Comments

Peter pegnall 09 July 2019

clever, compassionate, quirky, Julia is one of the most astute and penetrating poets in the English language.

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