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British poet, biographer and children's writer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Julia Copus FRSL (born 1969) is a British poet, biographer and children's writer.
Julia Celina Copus | |
|---|---|
Copus in 2007 | |
| Born | London Borough of Lambeth, England |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Durham University |
| Notable awards | Forward Prize for Best Single Poem; Eric Gregory Award |
| Spouse | Andrew Stevenson (m. 2012) Charles Barrow (m. 2000; div. 2005) |
| Website | |
| Official website | |
Copus was born in London and grew up with three brothers, two of whom went on to become musicians.[1] She attended The Mountbatten School, a comprehensive in Romsey, and Peter Symonds Sixth Form College in Winchester.[2] She went on to study Latin at St Mary's College, Durham.[3]
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, the pamphlet Walking in the Shadows (1994), which won the Poetry Business competition,[4] In Defence of Adultery (Bloodaxe, 2003), The World's Two Smallest Humans (Faber, 2012), shortlisted for both the Costa Book Award for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize, and Girlhood (Faber 2019), winner of the inaugural Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.[5][6] She is known for establishing a new form in English poetry, which she has called the specular form,[7] in which the second half of the poem mirrors the first, using the same lines but in reverse order and differently punctuated.[6]
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.[8][9]
Copus was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Exeter in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and the following year 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,[10] and in 2020 her collection Girlhood was awarded the inaugural Derek Walcott Prize for best collection by a non-US citizen. She has served on the judging panel for a number of literary prizes, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Costa Book Award, the UK's National Poetry Competition, the Encore Award for best second novel, the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets, the T. S. Eliot Prize for poetry and the Tower Poetry Competition for 16-18 year olds, run by Christ Church, Oxford.[9]
Copus has also written four picture books: Hog in the Fog,[11] The Hog, The Shrew and the Hullabaloo (Faber 2015), The Shrew that Flew (Faber 2016) and My Bed is an Air Balloon (Faber 2018).[9]
She lives in Blackheath, London, with her husband, Andrew Stevenson.
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