Jo Shapcott was born in London in 1953. She was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin. She is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of English Literary and Linguistic Studies, University of Newcastle, Visiting Professor at the London Institute and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.She was the 1997 Penguin Writers Fellow at the British Library.

Her Book Poems 1988-1998 (2000), consists of a selection of poetry from her three earlier collections: Electroplating the Baby (1988), which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998), awarded with the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection). She has also won the National Poetry Competition twice.

Together with Matthew Sweeney she edited an anthology of contemporary poetry in English, gathered from around the world, entitled Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996).

Jo Shapcott has worked with a number of musicians on collaborative projects. She has written lyrics for, or had poems set to music by, composers such as Detlev Glamert, Nigel Osborne and John Woolrich. Her poems were set to music by composer Stephen Montague in The Creatures Indoors, premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra in 1997. Her book Tender Taxes, a collection of versions of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems in French, was published in 2002.

To learn more about Jo Shaphcott, go to Contemporary Writers.