Jo Shapcott

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Poet Jo Shapcott CBE was born in London in 1953. She was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin. She is currently teaching on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, Visiting Professor at the Department of English Literary and Linguistic Studies, Newcastle University, Visiting Professor at the London Institute and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. She is Consulting Editor for Arc Publications.

1 Overview

[edit] Overview

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), which won 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, but 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, Alec Roth, Erollyn Wallen, Peter Wiegold and John Woolrich. Her poems were set to music by composer Stephen Montague in The Creatures Indoors, premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in London in 1997. During the BBC Proms season, she presented the weekly 'Poetry Proms' on Radio 3.

Her book Tender Taxes, a collection of versions of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems in French, was published in 2002. The Transformers (due to be published in 2004) is a collection of public lectures given by Jo Shapcott as part of her Professorship at Newcastle, and she is co-editor (with Linda Anderson) of a collection of essays about Elizabeth Bishop.

[edit] Prizes and Awards

1982 South West Arts Literature Award
1985 National Poetry Competition (First Prize)
1989 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection Electroplating the Baby
1989 New Statesman Prudence Farmer Award
1991 National Poetry Competition (First Prize)
1999 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) My Life Asleep
2002 Created CBE in the Queen's New Years Honours List

[edit] Bibliography

Electroplating the Baby Bloodaxe, 1988
Phrase Book Oxford University Press, 1992
A Journey to the Inner Eye: A Guide for All South Bank Centre, 1996
Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (editor with Matthew Sweeney) Faber and Faber, 1996
Motherland Gwaithel & Gilwern, 1996
Penguin Modern Poets 12 (Helen Dunmore, Jo Shapcott, Matthew Sweeney) Penguin, 1997
My Life Asleep Oxford University Press, 1998
Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century (editor with Don Paterson) Picador, 1999
Poetry Quartets No. 5 (audio cassette including work by Helen Dunmore, U. A. Fanthorpe, Elizabeth *Jennings, Jo Shapcott) Bloodaxe, 1999
Her Book: Poems 1988-1998 Faber and Faber, 2000
Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery (editor with Linda Anderson) Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Series: 1, 2002
Tender Taxes Faber and Faber, 2002
The Transformers Bloodaxe, 2004