- Lumen Cold weather shelter poetry prize 2012, The Ideal Overcoat £3.00 UK inc. pp
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Release date: TBC Autmn 2012
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Reviews of previous work
All We Know Is All We See
Balancing the hard-edged with the lyrical is one of Cooper's greatest strengths, as is the memorable title, or exactly recalled turn of phrase.
Deborah Tyler-Bennett New Hope International Review
Bob Cooper’s gift is to imbue low-key detail with significance, rather like the paintings of Edward Hopper. Everything matters, and what we barely notice can matter most of all. The poems refuse to shout, or even sing too loudly. Cooper leaves what he touches trembling and humming. This book establishes him as a humane and distinctive voice
Peter Bennet Other Poetry
Bob Cooper comes from that broad highway of British verse that began with Hardy, runs through Larkin and the Movement, and is very popular with Small Press editors to this day. Life goes on, he seems to say, whatever poets think about it.
Tony Lewis Jones Poetry Scotland
Pinocchio’s Long Neb
Poems that sparkle with humour and seduce with sadness. At times Cooper is so good at this that he almost reminds of Prevert.
Tim Allen Terrible Work
Cooper’s compositions are filled with human characters that somehow appear to us to be more than motifs in a poetry book. Although about everyday events, this is far from an everyday book.
Joao Henriques Chapman 102-3The poems are deceptively open but each brings to the light the hidden secrets of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people... Cooper's poetry is written with the ease of someone at home with the natural rhythms of speech but who is also able to dig under people's outer shell to reveal not only their own character but the underlying determination and resilience of the people
Polly Bird New Hope International Review
Drinking Up Time
Bob Cooper writes earthy poetry with a lyricist's touch. This combination of toughness and sensitivity is a winning team.
Michael Bangerter New Hope International Review
His particular eye brilliantly gives us the complexity of ‘ordinary’ lives.
Michael Standen Other Poetry
I look like pigging out on Cooper at the moment, as I just got hold of the Northumbria anthology and note you’re pretty well represented in that. To be a good poet you must know how to spell Brylcreem, so you’ve passed the test.
Peter Mortimer Iron PressBeyond Liathach
Bob Cooper’s “Beyond Liathach” begins as a travelogue but ends as much more: shadows lengthen. It is the preserve of art.
Brian Hinton
Light From The Upper Left
Bob Cooper’s poems are the well made results of a marriage between the open air of fields and meadows and the claustrophobia of home and heart. A writer who calls a spade a spade and knows how to dig with it...
Maura DooleyAbout the Author
Bob Cooper was born on Tees-side in 1950. He’s lived in the North East, in quite a few places, for 32 years; in Yorkshire, in a couple of towns, for 13 years; west of the Pennines, again in two places, for 8 years; in Bristol for 4 years; and, now, he’s lived in Birmingham for 4 years. He’s a Methodist Minister but has worked in Adult Education as a Creative Writing Tutor since the late-1990s.His poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK and abroad, has been translated into German (where, he discovered when he heard it, it sounded more musical than it seems in English.) It has been performed on radio and, over the years, he has read at many Festivals and poetry venues in the UK.
Previous Collections:
- Bruised Echoes (Outposts, 1977)
- Light From The Upper Left (Smith Doorstop, 1994)
- Beyond Liathach (Tears In The Fence, 1995)
- Drinking Up Time (Redbeck Press, 1997)
- Pinocchio’s Long Neb (Smith Doorstop, 2000)
- All We Know Is All We See (Arrowhead, 2002)