Chairperson: Mary Shine Thompson

‘funny, melancholy and devastatingly observant’ Helen Dunmore on Wendy Cope

‘Work of meditative intelligence, humour and forgiving humanity.’ the Irish Times on Dennis O’Driscoll

 Wendy Cope and Dennis O’Driscoll have both been likened to that consummate observer of human foibles and failings, Philip Larkin. Here the two poets read and discuss their work –casting the everyday experience of being human in fresh and revelatory light.

Wendy Cope is one of Britain’s most successful and popular contemporary poets. Concealing weighty concerns beneath a deceptively light touch, her mordant humour and dark edge have graced such acclaimed collections as her sharply parodic debut Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1984), the Whitbread-shortlisted If I Don’t Know (2001), and her latest, Family Values(2011).

Like Cope, Dennis O’Driscoll sees poetry as a ‘vehicle for discovery’, granting ‘a glimpse into the “heart of things”.’ His new collection, Dear Life, engages with contemporary issues (the Internet era, compensation culture, global warming) alongside timeless topics – of working and ageing, loving and dying. O’Driscoll is also editor of the Bloodaxe Book of PoetryQuotations and author of Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, shortlisted for ‘Book of the Decade’ in the Irish Book Awards 2010.