Jane Draycott was born in London in 1954 and studied at King's College London and Bristol University. Her pamphlet No Theatre (Smith/Doorstop) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 1997, and her first full collection Prince Rupert's Drop (Carcanet/OxfordPoets), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 1999. In 2002 she was the winner of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry and in 2004, the year of her second Carcanet/OxfordPoets collection, The Night Tree, she was nominated as one of the Poetry Book Society's 'Next Generation' poets. Her other books include Christina the Astonishing (with Lesley Saunders and Peter Hay, 1998) and Tideway (illustrated by Peter Hay, 2002), both from Two Rivers Press. She lectures in creative writing at Oxford University and the University of Lancaster.

Jane Draycott's personal website can be visited at www.janedraycott.org.uk