Bernard Kops was born in 1926. He was brought up in the East End. His seven previous volumes of poetry, include Barricades in West Hampstead and Grandchildren and Other Poems. Hia poetry has appeared in many anthologies, including Penguin's Children of Albion, Poetry of the Underground in Britain in 1969 and in Markings (No.23) in 2006 - a special 80th birthday tribute to him with contributions from many of Britain's leading poets and authors. He came to public prominence with his first play, The Hamlet of Stepney Green (1956),considered to be one of the keystones of the "New Wave" in British Drama, the first of more than 20 stage plays, which include Ezra, an evocation of the controversial life of Ezra Pound, The Dream of Peter Mann, Enter Solly Gold and Playing Sinatra. His Children's play, Dreams of Anne Frank, won the Time Out Award for best Fringe Play in 1992/3. His BBC Radio play Sailing with Homer won the Writer's Guild award in 1995. Among his nine novels, is Yes From No Man's Land, about the uncertainty of religious faith in a changing world His two autobiographies, The World is a Wedding (1973) and Shalom Bomb (2000)were widely acclaimed. Selected Bibliography Awake for Mourning (MacGibbon and Kee, 1958) Motorbike (New English Library, 1962 The World is a Wedding (MacGibbon & Kee, 1963) Yes from No-Man's Land (MacGibbon and Kee, 1965) The Dissent of Dominick Shapiro (MacGibbon and Kee, 1966) By the Waters of Whitechapel (Bodley Head, 1969) The Passionate Past of Gloria Gaye (Secker and Warburg, 1971) Settle Down Simon Katz (Secker and Warburg) Partners (Secker and Warburg, 1975) On Margate Sands (Secker and Warburg, 1978) Neither Your Honey nor Your Sting: An Offbeat History of the Jews (Robson, 1985) Plays One (Playing Sinatra, The Hamlet of Stepney Green, Ezra) (Oberon Books, 1999) Plays Two (Dreams of Anne Frank, Cafe Zeitgeist, Call in the Night) (Oberon Books, 2000) Plays Three (The Dream of Peter Mann, Enter Solly Gold, Who Shall I Be Tomorrow?) (Oberon Books, 2001) Shalom Bomb: The Autobiography of Bernard Kops (Oberon Books, 2000) Bernard Kops East End (Five Leaves Publications, 2006)
Kops evokes the real world - the world as we know and live and breathe it." Mike Leigh The poem, Shalom Bomb was powerful, ecstatic... incomparably imaginative, committed and aware writing.A" Michael Horovitz His poems about nuclear war, about the Holocaust (in which many of his family perished) and more recently about his love for his wife Erica and his immediate family will be remembered for their shapely form and their personal force. He is a worthy literary descendant of the First World War poet Isaac Rosenberg.A" Michael Kustow "As a poet, he ranks with the other great European poet/playwright,Federico Garcia Lorca: the same passion, directness and lyrical intensity. His poems about nuclear war, about the Holocaust (in which many of his family perished) and more recently about his love for his wife Erica and his immediate family, will be remembered for their shapely form and their personal force. He is a worthy literary descendant of the First World War poet Isaac Rosenberg." Michael Kustow "Bernard Kops is the great unsung poet of escape. Few writers, and even fewer dramatists have managed to explore so fully our inexhaustable capacity to escape that endless series of traps called life. But Kops's landscape is no rarefied existential metaphor where the characters pine for some abstract void that lies beyond oblivion. "True flavour. Fresh and affecting. The poetic force of the Stations of the Cross" Alan Ross, The Observer.
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