Julia Copus

Julia Copus was born in London and grew up with three brothers, two of which went on to become musicians.[1] She attended Mountbatten School, a large comprehensive in Romsey, and Peter Symonds Sixth Form College.[2] She went on to study Latin at Durham University.[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 Awards (poetry category) and the T.S. Eliot Prize, and Girlhood (Faber 2019).[5] She is known for establishing a new form in English poetry, which she has called the specular form, in which the second half of the poem mirrors the first, using the same lines but in reverse order and differently punctuated.[5]

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'.[6]

Copus was awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship 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'. 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, Encore Award and T. S. Eliot Prize for poetry.[6]

Copus has also written four picture books: Hog in the Fog (Faber 2014), The Hog, The Shrew and the Hullabaloo (Faber 2015), The Shrew that Flew (Faber 2016) and My Bed is an Air Balloon (Faber 2018).[6]

She lives in Curry Mallet, with her husband, Andrew Stevenson.

• 1994 Eric Gregory Award (Society of Authors)
• 1997 The Shuttered Eye shortlisted for Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection
• 2002 National Poetry Competition, First Prize - 'Breaking the Rule'
• 2002 BBC Alfred Bradley Bursary Award for Best New Radio Playwright, Eenie Meenie Macka Racka
• 2005 Arts Council Writers' Award
• 2010 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem), 'An Easy Passage'
• 2011 Ghost Lines shortlisted for Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry
• 2012 Costa Book Awards (poetry category), shortlist, The World's Two Smallest Humans
• 2012 T S Eliot Prize, shortlist, The World's Two Smallest Humans [7]
• 2014 Authors' Foundation Grant (Society of Authors)

• Julia Copus author page on the Faber & Faber website
• Julia Copus reading her poems on The Poetry Archive
• Julia Copus biography page on the Royal Literary Fund website