Jennifer Copley

In 1995 I began writing poetry. I’d been waiting for time to do this for 30 years. Starting to write in my fifties has meant having to confront traumas like the death of parents and also a brother, helplessness in the face of senility, mental illness, the impact caused by a disabled son. All these things have informed my poetry.

Biography

Jennifer Copley was born in Barrow-in-Furness in 1946. After living in London and Oxford, she has returned to the place where she began. She has been a teacher, a doctor’s secretary, a Party-Plan clothes saleswoman and sold bacon in Asda. She is now just a poet and mother of three, lives with sculptor husband, Martin Copley, next door to her daughter and granddaughters. She is a lover of popular culture, milk chocolate and cats.

Publication History

Poetry collections

• Unsafe Monuments (Arrowhead Press, 2006)
• House by the Sea (Arrowhead Press, 2003)
• Ice (Smith Doorstop, 2002)

Poetry Anthologies

• The Forward Book of Poetry (Forward, 2008)
• Wigtown Competition Anthology 2008
• Buzz (Templar Poetry, 2008)
• Wigtown Competition Anthology 2007
• 9th Ware Poetry Competition Anthology (Rockingham Press, 2007)
• The Virginia Warbey Poetry Prize Anthology (The Merdon Marque, 2006)
• The Tickling Crocodile (Blinking Eye, 2004)
• Lancaster Litfest Anthology 2005 & 2000

Literary Journals and Newspapers in which individual poems have appeared include Acumen, Equinox, Iota, Long Islander, Penniless Press, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Telegraph, The Interpreter’s House, The North, The Rialto, Seam, Smoke, Smiths Knoll, Staple, Stand.

Her latest poetry collection, Beans in Snow, is due out from Smokestack in October.

Reviews

• Urgent, visceral work, written out of a fierce commitment to truth. Copley’s collection deals with strange territory in a memorable and disturbing way U.A. Fanthorpe on House by the Sea
• These poems explore the poignancy of real lives in time:- childhood, old age, the greeds and needs of love. By turns charming, sensuous and disturbing, they give fresh resonance to ancient archetypes, and convey a grounded, tactful sense of the frail comedy of human things Carol Rumens on Unsafe Monuments

Readings

Jennifer has read her work around the North West of the UK and further afield, including at the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, Ireland, 2005, as part of an Arrowhead Tour in Newcastle, London, Southampton, 2004, at the Wigtown Festival, Scotland, 2005.

Listen to Jennifer read Repercussions, published in The Crowd Without, Flax018

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Awards/Prizes

• 2nd prize Essex Poetry Competition 2008
• 2nd prize Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2007
• 2nd prize New Writer’s Collection Category 2007
• 1st prize (National Winner – Ottakar’s and Faber Poetry Competition 2006)
• 3rd prize New Writer’s Collection Category 2005
• Shortlisted Strokestown International Poetry Competition 2005
• South Cumbria Poet Laureate 2005

Personal Reflection

Having lived for many years in my grandmother’s house where I feel deeply rooted, gives me a stability which is critical for my writing. I suffer from a recurring nightmare of being torn away from home. A lot of my poems are about a childhood over which hangs a sense of menace. Born to parents with high expectations, I was sent to boarding school where I didn’t thrive, then teacher-training college where I felt like a fish out of water. Do I need to write poetry to regain control over my life? Probably, but doing something I love where I feel completely myself, is more likely.