JO SHAPCOTT
Jo Shapcott's first book of poetry, Electroplating the Baby (Bloodaxe) won the Commonwealth Prize, and her third, My Life Asleep (Oxford Paperbacks), won the Forward prize. Her collections include Her Book: Poems 1988-1998 (Faber and Faber). She teaches creative writing at the University of London and is President of the Poetry Society.

JOHN HARTLEY WILLIAMS is currently poet in residence at The Wordsworth Trust in Cumbria. He has published ten collections of poetry, two of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. The latest collection shortlisted for this award was Blues (Jonathan Cape, 2004). He has published translations from German, French, Serbo-Croatian as well as versions of the Rumanian poet Marin Sorescu: Censored Poems (2001) Bloodaxe. He has published reviews and essays etc widely in UK poetry magazines and literary journals. He has also written a prose memoir Ignoble Sentiments (1995), published by Arc, and a mysterious prose work called Mystery in Spiderville, which was reissued in paperback by Vintage (2003). A reader-friendly guide to the writing of poetry called Teach Yourself Writing Poetry, co-written with the Irish poet Matthew Sweeney, will be reissued in a revised edition by Hodder in 2008. A privately printed book of poems and photographs North Sea Improvisation (2003), set in and around Cuxhaven on the North Sea German coast, is available from the poet. His most recent collection – a retrospective volume of (mostly) previously uncollected poems called The Ship – was published by Salt in 2007. A new collection, Red Wine, is forthcoming.

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