Wendy Cope is an award-winning contemporary English poet. She was educated at Farringtons School and read history at St Hilda\'s College, Oxford. She now lives in Winchester with the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.
Following her graduation from St Hilda\'s College, Cope spent fifteen years as a primary-school teacher. In 1981 she became Arts and Reviews editor for the Inner London Education Authority magazine- Contact. Five years later she became a freelance writer and was a television critic for The Spectator magazine until 1990.
Three books of her poetry have been published (Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis in 1986, Serious Concerns in 1992 and If I Don\'t Know in 2001), and she has edited several anthologies of comic verse.
In 1998 she was voted the listeners\' choice in a BBC Radio 4 poll to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate. She was a judge of the 2007 Man Booker prize.