Polly Clark was born in Toronto in 1968 and brought up in Lancashire, Cumbria and the Borders of Scotland. She has worked variously as a zookeeper, a teacher of English in Hungary and in publishing at Oxford University Press. In 1997 she won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry. Her first collection, Kiss (Bloodaxe Books, 2000), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her second, Take Me With You (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Farewell My Lovely (Bloodaxe Books, 2009) is her third collection. She has also published short stories. Polly now lives on the West Coast of Scotland and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Edinburgh University.