Pieces of me: Wendy Cope, poet

"This is me when I’m happy, with my father. He was nearly 60 when I was born and carried on working until he was over 70. He was an ­emotional man. We children had to be kept out of the way because he was old and worked hard and worried about the business. He married a much younger woman and wanted a quiet life. He should have intervened to protect us from her because she wasn’t very nice to us" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"Roger Bear has been with me since I was one. I love him. He is wearing clothes knitted by my grandmother. I was sent to boarding school aged seven and he was the only bit of home I could take with me. But since my home was very ­unhappy, by the time I was a teenager I was ­definitely better off at boarding school" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"The pendant was a present from my father to my mother. I wear it most of the time" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"This is my partner, the poet and critic Lachlan Mackinnon, with whom I have spent the happiest years of my life. My view of men mellowed after I met Lachlan. I always knew there were some nice men in the world — like my father" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"I was a primary school teacher for many years. This is a picture of me with my class in 1978 at the Coburg School, off the Old Kent Road in ­London. What I miss most about teaching is ­making music with the children" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"My father painted. My parents both left school at 14 and were self-taught. I went to university but I can’t say I had a great time at Oxford" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"In the 1980s, I had a love affair with a German poet. This collection of poems by Heinrich Heine was a present from him — one of the best presents I’ve ever been given because the poems were a wonderful discovery" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"AE Housman is probably my favourite poet. His poems make me cry, but he can also be very funny. The idea of a woman poet would probably have made him spit" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"This was my Nana’s chair. It’s nice having things from my childhood home in my new one" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"Bach is my favourite composer. I rarely listen to anything else" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"I didn’t have a garden when I lived in London, so I really appreciate the one I have in ­Winchester. The rose bush was a birthday present from Lachlan" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"I can play the guitar, and also the piano and ­recorder, and I sing. I really enjoy it" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"I had a difficult relationship with my mother, but some of my happier memories are associated with us standing around the piano together. My mother was an amateur pianist" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"Mrs Arnold, our cleaner when I was a child, was the kindest, most loving person I’ve ever known. She was with us until I was 18 and I kept in touch with her until she died" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian

"This is my current notebook, containing my most ­recent poems" Photograph: Martin Godwin/Guardian