Bloodaxe Books: Title Page > Julia Copus: In Defence of Adultery

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

We don’t fall in love: it rises through us the way that certain music does, writes Julia Copus in the title-poem of In Defence of Adultery. So too her quirky, highly musical poems infuse us with primal stirrings as we read them, sharing her unease and anxiety but also enlivened by a thrilling sense of personal recognition.

Imbued with a wry logic and a spellbinding resonance, In Defence of Adultery traces the paths of lives and relationships through a world carved out by the choices we make. At the same time, it summons up another world beneath our ever-pressing turmoil of love and family relationships, a parallel world made up of what might have been, as well as what might still be.

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. This highly assured second collection will establish Julia Copus as one of the most distinctive and attractive voices to emerge in recent years. The book includes the poem that won the National Poetry Competition, ‘Breaking the Rule’.

‘Julia Copus’s poems view some of the most turbulent moments in life through a sharp, clear lens: mature, uncomfortably honest, uncompromising’ – Maura Dooley

‘A poet of relationships…offering some important insights into how we make our ways through what Stephen Hawking calls "the dark stuff" of our universe’ – John Sears

‘She slips skilfully in and out of figures from myth, fairytale, art and literature…Her poetry is deft, and seethes with anxiety and displacement. Where she will go after this accomplished debut is anyone’s guess’ – Maggie O'Farrell, Poetry London