The idea for this book – a new selection of her poems with notes – grew out of Wendy Cope’s experience of meeting her audience, when reading her poems in schools. This is an edition of the poems which identifies the references, verse-forms, contexts and occasions of her work, and which offers readers a new arrangement of the poetry as a whole. The notes also identify dates of composition, so that it is possible observe the development of the work. As well as drawing on Wendy Cope’s three published books, the selection also includes a significant number of poems collected or published for the first time.