Julia Copus’s exhilarating new collection, Girlhood, is a book of transgressed boundaries and seductive veneers. Restlessly inquisitive, it exposes the shifting power balance between things on the verge of becoming and the forces that threaten to destroy them. Reading these poems, we have the sense of encountering a series of filmic installations arranged by…
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Life Support is an inspiring choice of verse that offers an escape from the constant chatter of everyday thought and will help readers orient ourselves within the often hectic landscape of daily life. Organised in sections – with each suggesting a different way of looking at the world – these are poems that offer consolation by…
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These finely tuned poems are the fruit of Julia’s upbringing in a musical family, an affinity with the Classics, a fascination with the arc of time, and an unflinching scrutiny of love and personal relationships. The book concludes with a moving arrangement of pieces that explore the author’s experience of IVF: poems written with wry humour and with grace, which celebrate the mysteries of conception alongside the sometimes surreal business of medical intervention. The World’s Two Smallest Humans is an unforgettable read.
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These strong and vital poems hold science and art, time and timelessness in a tense balance. Dense, elliptical, and suggestive, they throw down a challenge to readers, urging us to be constantly on the move rather than stand still and stagnate.
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Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, Julia’s debut collection is also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
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