The Writers of Wales Database

SHAPCOTT, JO

Poet. Born in London, Jo now lives in Radnorshire. She has studied at Trinity College, Dublin, St Hilda’s College, Oxford, Harvard University and the University of Bristol. She was Northern Arts Literary Fellow at the Universities of Newcastle and Durham in 1998–2000 and the first Visiting Professor of Poetry at Newcastle in 2000­-2001, when she gave the inaugural Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures. Jo was the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Oxford Brookes University for 2003-2004. Her work has won numerous prizes and awards; she is twice winner of the National Poetry Competition. Jo’s first collection, Electroplating the Baby (Bloodaxe, 1988) won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Collection, while My Life Asleep (Oxford University Press, 1998) won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection) in 1999.

Phrase Book (Oxford University Press, 1992) and My Life Asleep (Oxford University Press, 1998) were both Poetry Book Society Choices. Tender Taxes (Faber and Faber, 2001), her versions of Rilke’s poems in French, appeared in 2002. Of Mutability (Faber and Faber, 2010) has been short listed in the 2010 Costa Poetry Award category. She teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London and is Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts, London. Jo is also Consulting Editor for Arc Publications and a Member of Academi.

Reviews:

"…Jo Shapcott's is a voice that reaches out and grabs. In all her work, she transforms the extraordinary into the immediately plausible…Whatever her province, her concern remains for the chaotically unaccountable in humanity…"
Mark Wormald, Times Literary Supplement

"...Poems which have a way of turning physics into the physical, the subatomic field of matter into one vast erogenous zone..."
Jamie McKendrick, Independent on Sunday

"...Shapcott is gifted and original, and it is in work such as hers that the future health of poetry needs to be sought..."
Sean O'Brien,Sunday Times

"...There is about Shapcott's poetry a passionate reticence. Once in disguise, though, pressed into other skins and other perspectives, she howls and sings..."
Michael Hofmann, The Times


Selected Publications
Electroplating the Baby (Bloodaxe, 1988)
Phrase Book (Oxford Poets Series) (Oxford University Press, 1992)
Motherland (Gwaithel & Gilwern, 1996) 
My Life Asleep (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Era (Broadsheet) (Turret Books, 1999)
Her Book: Poems 1988-1998 (Faber and Faber, 1999)
Poems 1988-1998 (Faber, 2000)
Tender Taxes: Translations from Rainer Maria Rilke (Faber and Faber, 2001)
Of Mutability (Faber and Faber, 2010)
The Transformers: Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures (Bloodaxe, 2011)

Contributed to:
Contemporary Slovenian Poetry (co-editor) (Bloodaxe, 1996)
Penguin Modern Poets (co-writer) (Penguin, 1997)
Correspondences: a Collaboration (co-editor) (EMH Arts/Eagle Graphics, 1999)
Last Words (co-editor) (Picador, 1999)
Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery (co-editor) (Bloodaxe, 2002)
Apology for Absence (editor) (Arc Publications, 2004)
In Waterlight: Donald Atkinson. Poems New, Selected and Revised (editor) (Arc Publications, 2004) 
Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (co-editor) (Faber and Faber, 2004)
George Herbert (Poet to Poet Series) (editor) (Faber and Faber 2006)
Ten Poems About Tea (contributor) (Candlestick Press, 2011)