Adrian Henri (10 April 1932 – 20 December 2000) was a British poet and painter best remembered as the founder of poetry-rock group the Liverpool Scene and as one of three poets in the best-selling anthology The Mersey Sound, along with Brian Patten and Roger McGough. The trio of Liverpool poets came to prominence in that city's Merseybeat zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s. He was described by Edward Lucie-Smith in British Poetry since 1945 as the "theoretician" of the three. His characterisation of popular culture in verse helped to widen the audience for poetry among 1960s British youth. He was influenced by the French Symbolist school of poetry and surrealist art.

W.N. Herbert is a highly versatile poet who writes both in English and Scots. Born in Dundee, he established his reputation with two English/Scots collections from Bloodaxe, Forked Tongue (1994) and Cabaret McGonagall (1996), followed by The Laurelude (1998), The Big Bumper Book of Troy (2002), Bad Shaman Blues (2006) and Omnesia (2013). He has also published a critical study, To Circumjack MacDiarmid (OUP, 1992). His practical guide Writing Poetry was published by Routledge in 2010. He co-edited Strong Words: modern poets on modern poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2000) with Matthew Hollis, and Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2012) with Yang Lian. Born in Dundee, he is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University and lives in a lighthouse overlooking the River Tyne at North Shields.

Twice shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, his collections have also been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, McVities Prize, Saltire Awards and Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. Four are Poetry Book Society Recommendations.

Tracey Herd was born in 1968 in East Kilbride but has lived on the east coast of Scotland for most of her life. She studied at Dundee University, where she was Creative Writing Fellow in 1998-2001. In 1993 she won an Eric Gregory Award, and in 1995 a Scottish Arts Council Bursary. In 2002 she collaborated on a short opera, Descent, with the composer Gordon McPherson for Paragon Ensemble which was performed at the Traverse Theatre in Glasgow. In 2004 she received a second Scottish Arts Council bursary. She is a freelance writer who worked for some years as a bookseller, and has latterly been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her first collection, No Hiding Place (Bloodaxe Books, 1996) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her second collection, Dead Redhead (2001), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her third collection is due from Bloodaxe in 2014.

Born in 1910, Miguel Hernández was a self-educated goatherd from the tiny Spanish town of Orihuela who tried hard to be accepted among his older contemporaries. Lorca wrote to the young poet in 1933, telling him to stop struggling to get along in a 'circle of literary pigs'. Both Lorca and Hernández would soon be caught up in the storm that was the Spanish Civil War. Hernández volunteered and served the Republican Army at the front, later defending Madrid itself. When Madrid finally fell to Franco in 1939, Hernández tried to cross into Portugal and soon after he was turned back, he was imprisoned. Hernandez wrote his last poems in jail while fatally ill with tuberculosis. He died three years later, his tuberculosis untreated, still in prison on March 28, 1942: he was only 31.