Graham Mort was born in Lancashire and studied English at Liverpool University. He worked as a mill labourer, dairy operative and psychiatric nurse before training as a teacher. He taught in schools, colleges, prisons, special education and psychiatric units before becoming a freelance writer. He gained a doctorate from the University of Glamorgan and is now Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University, where his academic research ranges from contemporary fiction and poetry to emergent African writing. He devised the Crossing Borders and Radiophonics schemes, training African writers and promoting their work via radio and podcasts. He is the author of nine previous collections of poetry (one a New and Selected Poems), two prize-winning collections of short stories, radio dramas and educational coursebooks.

'Graham Mort mines more worldly and concrete territory in his fluid, imagistic poems - Mort writes with quiet musicality and attractive ingenuity, he'll introduce a few disparate elements into a poem, then interlace them until they mesh organically as a whole. - Poetry Review (on Night on the Lash) "Graham has always been a master of technique of "show not tell", and his poems evoke the noises and smells of other countries, the unique atmosphere of other lives and times" - Edinburgh Review His control of verse-line and verse-paragraph are as impressive as his incisive way with words and images. Here the invitation to 'think' provokes not abstract generalities but precise concrete Images drawn from the physical world - Richard Poole in Planet