Born in 1951, Paul Wilkins grew up in south London and lived in Northern Ireland from 1970. After studying English at the University of Ulster in Derry and Coleraine, he taught at St Columb's College in Derry from 1976 to 1997. In the autumn of 1984 he was Schoolmaster Fellow Commoner at Churchill College, Cambridge. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1978 and his first book of poems, Pasts, was published by Carcanet in 1979, and Truths of the Unremembered Things followed two decades later. He spent his final seven years as a librarian at Lumen Christi College, where he made a deep impression. He died on 31 January 2007 in Derry.