Jo Shapcott is one of Britain’s leading poets. She has twice won the National Poetry Competition, and won the Forward Prize in 1999. She was Northern Arts Literary Fellow at the universities of Newcastle and Durham in 1998-2000, and is Visiting Professor of Poetry at Newcastle University and at the University of the Arts, London; she also teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College. She is president of the Poetry Society. Her poetry books include Electroplating the Baby (Bloodaxe Books, 1988), Phrase Book (OUP, 1992), My Life Asleep (OUP, 1998), Her Book (Faber, 1999) and Tender Taxes, including her versions from Rilke’s French poems (Faber, 2001). She co-edited the anthology Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (Faber, 1996) with Matthew Sweeney and Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery (Bloodaxe / Newcastle University, 2002) with Linda Anderson.