Frank Ormsby was born in 1947 in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. He describes himself as by nature an 'anxious optimist'. His work draws on his rural upbringing in Co Fermanagh but increasingly reflects a sense of Belfast where has lived since 1998. He is a graduate and postgraduate of Queen's University, Belfast and has worked as an editor and published three collections of poems. In 1992 he received the Cultural Traditions Awards in memory of John Hewitt and in 2002 the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award from the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota. Since 1975 he has been Head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.