Jamie McKendrick was born in Liverpool in 1955. He taught at the University of Salerno in Italy and is the author of four collections of poetry: The Sirocco Room (1991); The Kiosk on the Brink (1993); The Marble Fly (1997), winner of the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and a Poetry Book Society Choice; and Ink Stone (2003), which was shortlisted for the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award. He is editor of the 20th-Century Italian Poems (2004), and his translation of the poetry of Valerio Magrelli will be published by Faber next year. Jamie McKendrick lives in Oxford.