Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis

There are many poetry collections that arrive wearing an expression of extreme importance, as though they have just stepped out of a seminar on mortality and expect you to take notes. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis is not one of those books. Wendy Cope, gloriously, has no time for that sort of thing. Or rather, she has exactly enough time to notice it, skewer it, make a cup of cocoa for it, and then write a poem so deceptively light and sharp that you only realise later she has quietly taken the whole room apart.

First published in 1986 and here in a 1999 Faber edition, this is one of those rare collections that manages to be clever without showing off, funny without becoming flimsy, and moving without any theatrical clearing of the throat. Cope has the unnerving gift of making poetry look easy, which is usually a sign that it is very hard indeed. She can do romance, loneliness, disappointment, domestic absurdity, and literary parody all with the sort of calm precision that makes lesser writers want to go and lie down.

The title alone is a small masterpiece. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis sounds like the sort of thing that ought not to be a poem at all, let alone a memorable one. It has the air of a private joke, a social mishap, and a minor act of English servitude all at once. And that is very much the book’s territory: the awkwardnesses and ridiculousnesses of real life, observed with an eye that is affectionate but not remotely sentimental. There is love here, certainly, but also embarrassment, irritation, longing, and the weary recognition that other people are often both marvellous and impossible.

What makes Wendy Cope so enduring is that she understands a truth many solemn literary types prefer to ignore: being funny is not the opposite of being serious. In fact, it is often the quickest route to seriousness, because a well-placed joke can slip straight past the usual defences. One moment you are smiling at a neat rhyme or a sly parody, and the next you are confronted with something horribly familiar about relationships, self-doubt, or the endless business of being a person in the modern world. It is all done so lightly you almost resent how effective it is.

And then there is the unmistakable pleasure of the thing. This is a collection for people who like language but do not feel the need to wrestle it to the floor. It is for readers who enjoy wit, clarity, and the occasional perfectly aimed dart thrown at pretension. It is also, frankly, an excellent book to own if you want guests to think you are both literate and not unbearable. Leaving a copy of Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis on a table suggests discernment, humour, and a healthy distrust of pomp. Leaving, say, a heavily annotated copy of something impenetrably postmodern suggests rather more than that, and not necessarily in a good way.

As a Very Good copy sold by Crappy Old Books, this one has exactly the right credentials. It is not a museum specimen sealed away from human contact, but nor has it been dragged through the emotional trenches. Very good is the ideal state for a book like this: loved enough to have been chosen, cared for enough to remain handsome, and sufficiently presentable to be gifted, displayed, or smugly retrieved from a shelf when someone says they do not really like poetry. That usually means they have not read Wendy Cope.

Published by Faber and Faber, that grand old institution of poetic seriousness, this volume has the added pleasure of smuggling wit into august surroundings. One imagines it sitting there among the weighty collections, dryly refusing to behave. Which is exactly as it should be. Cope’s work has always had that wonderful quality of seeming companionable while being ruthlessly well made. She is the literary equivalent of someone who appears chatty at dinner and then turns out to have delivered the most devastatingly accurate remark of the evening.

So here it is: a civilised, sparkling, subversive little triumph. A book for romantics, sceptics, poetry lovers, poetry avoiders, and anyone who has ever suspected that everyday life is both ridiculous and strangely touching. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis is charming, intelligent, and far more dangerous than it looks. Which, when you think about it, is probably the best kind of book.

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