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Simon Smith was born in 1961 in Redruth. He worked at The Poetry Library on the fifth floor of The Royal Festival Hall from 1991-2007, and was its Librarian from 2003 until 2007. He has taught Creative Writing at the University of Kent since 2009, where he is a Senior Lecturer. His previous four collections of poetry are Fifteen Exits (Waterloo Press, 2001); Reverdy Road (2003), Mercury (2006) and London Bridge (2010). Poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in Poetry Review, PN Review, Stand, fragmente, OR, FENCE, Shearsman magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Molly Bloom and Tears in the Fence, among other periodicals. In 2004 he was a judge of the National Poetry Competition; in 2009 he was a Fellow at Hawthornden Castle. Carcanet will shortly publish his versions of Catullus, and he is currently working on several projects relating to the oeuvre of American poet Paul Blackburn.