Strugnell's Haiku Strugnell's Haiku Strugnell's Haiku is a collection of three songs for voice and piano by the composer Colin Matthews, set to haiku poems by Jason Strugnell, an alter ego of the poet Wendy Cope. The texts cover the angst of living in South London, the abode of the fictional Strugnell, who lived in Tulse Hill and worked at Norwood library, and whose work shows the influence of a number of poets, including Ted Hughes, Craig Raine and James Elroy Flecker. The poems were originally published in Cope's collection "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis." The haiku touch on various experiences in
Julian Cope album). "My Nation Underground" produced only one Top 40 single, "Charlotte Anne", which also met with modest American success by reaching the top of the Modern Rock Tracks. Subsequent singles "5 O'Clock World" (a cover of a 1965 Vogues song) and the orchestral pop ballad "China Doll" both charted considerably lower, disappointing Island Records and further discouraging Cope, who had not enjoyed making the record and did not believe that it represented him properly as an artist. To comfort himself, Cope spent a single illicit weekend at the end of the "My Nation Underground" sessions to create a second, lo-fi