Norman Jope was born in 1960 in Plymouth, where he lives again after lengthy spells in other locations (most recently Bristol and Budapest). He has worked as an administrator at University College Plymouth St Mark & St John since 2002.

His collection For The Wedding-Guest (Stride) appeared in 1996 and creative and critical work has featured in magazines, webzines and anthologies in the UK and beyond; several pamphlets and chapbooks have also been published.

Jope edited Memes (1989-94) and co-edited, with the late Ian Robinson, the anthology In the Presence of Sharks: New Poetry from Plymouth (Phlebas: 2006). He is currently co-editing the Salt Companion to Richard Berengarten (formerly Burns) with Paul Scott Derrick and is closely involved with the Language Club, a Plymouth-based poetry collective. Translation of work into Romanian is underway and further collections are being finalised. 
 

A talent to be reckoned with....
Jay Ramsay

Jope is one of the more intriguing innovative poets now writing in the UK - his work is at times satisfyingly strange, exotic and linguistically rich.
Todd Swift, Eyewear

Starting from facing the nightmarish but all too real world of social and economic disintegration, Norman Jope moves through a personal questioning, reordering, seeking, imagining, to a point where individual and world reach towards integration and healing within a spiritual dimension, a dimension of love.
Jeremy Hilton, Tears in the Fence

He provides both intellectual depth and emotional involvement for the reader who is prepared to put in a bit of an effort... Norman Jope is a sophisticated writer who never allows his education to get in the way of his wonderment and sense of questing.
Steve Spence, Terrible Work

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