Jo Shapcott

Shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and the Costa Award, and former President of The Poetry Society

portrait
Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott joined Cape Farewell’s first Sea Change voyage in 2011, an expedition by boat across the Scottish islands from Oban across the Western Isles of Scotland to Lewis.

Jo Shapcott was born in London. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where she teaches on the MA in Creative Writing, and is former President of The Poetry Society. 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 is co-editor (with Linda Anderson) of a collection of essays about Elizabeth Bishop. Her latest book of poems is Of Mutability, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and the Costa Award.

“The excellent title poem [Of Mutability], a deceptively casual sonnet, acts as something of a tissue sample for most of the book’s concerns, from the mutations of cells to the disruption of the seasons, in a voice as mutable as the phenomena it describes.”

Frances Leviston, Guardian

About the 2011 expedition
About the Sea Change programme

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