Paul Farley was born in Liverpool in 1965. He teaches creative writing at the University of Lancaster. He has won the Forward Prize for the best first collection and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry. He has published three collections with Picador, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You, The Ice Age and, most recently, (2006), Tramp in Flames.

His radio play, When Louis Met George (2003), imagines MacNeice and George Orwell meeting in Broadcasting House during the Second World War. ‘Paul Farley takes up life’s slack tether and tautens it into poems that are rich in thought and memorable in expression, tuning into a cosmic white noise which, though it may lack meaning is never without significance’ (Patrick McGuinness)