Jo Shapcott is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award. Jo was born on 24 March 1953 in London, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and later won a Harkness Fellowship to Harvard. She has worked as Education Officer at the South Bank Centre, and for the Arts Council Literature Department. Her first collection, Electroplating the Baby won the Commonwealth Prize, and her second, Phrase Book (Oxford, 1992) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She was twice a winner of the National Poetry Competition. In 2011, she won The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.