Kelly Grovier was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and educated at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his doctorate from Oxford University in 2005 after being awarded a British Marshall Scholarship. Founder of the scholarly journal European Romantic Review, he is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and the Observer. He has written widely on the Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth and Keats, and his biography of London's notorious Newgate prison will be published by John Murray (Hodder) in 2008. In 2004 he was appointed Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

A Lens in the Palm is his first book of poems.