‘I love you. I’m glad I exist’: How The Orange made Wendy Cope the internet’s favourite poet

Wendy Cope likes a quiet life, was desperate not to be Poet Laureate and once crossly condemned the spread of her work online. Now, at 78, her droll, unpretentious verse and clear-eyed understanding of mental health has brought her late viral fame, writes Jessie Thompson, with her poem ‘The Orange’ inspiring TikTok tributes and tattoos

Wendy Cope’s poem ‘The Orange’ has brought her work to a whole new generation (Lydia Evans)

In Wendy Cope’s poem “The Orange”, she buys herself… a very big orange. One so huge that she laughs at it, then shares it with her friends (Robert and Dave). Next, she thinks about how, recently, “ordinary things” have made her happy – “the shopping”, or “a walk in the park”. Then, she completes “all the jobs on my list” (even with time to spare). But it’s the poem’s final line – simple, yet seemingly hard won – that knocks you sideways: “I love you. I’m glad I exist.”

“The Orange” is a quiet hymn not just to savouring small pleasures, but finally feeling at peace in your own skin. First published in 1992 as part of her second collection, Serious Concerns, it’s undoubtedly one of Cope’s best – typical of her economical, unpretentious style, and the vast emotional undercurrent that lurks beneath her poetry like an iceberg. And now, three decades on, an entire new generation of fans have fallen for this unfussy love letter to life’s everyday joys. As such, Faber & Faber are publishing a dainty new edition, The Orange and other poems (complete with cheer-inducing cover illustration); an accompanying “I love you. I’m glad I exist” pin badge is already sold out on the publisher’s website.

Born in Kent in 1945, Cope spent 14 years working as a primary school teacher before her debut collection, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, full of sharp parodies of the “great” male scribes, established her as a drily witty poet of the people almost overnight. Today, head to TikTok and you will find hundreds of posts where “The Orange” – recited by a man with a soothing Irish voice – is the soundtrack to appreciating the present. People post compilations of simple but divine moments in their days: cuddling their dogs, playing the piano, watching bees land on lavender, standing by calm running streams, hula hooping, or even just reading a book.