Kathleen Jamie is a leading figure in a generation of distinguished Scottish poets that also includes Don Paterson, Robert Crawford, John Burnside, Roddy Lumsden and Jackie Kay. She was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland in 1962, and grew up in Edinburgh, where she studied philosophy at Edinburgh University. Her poetry career got off to an early start when she received an Eric Gregory Award (for poets under 30) in 1981. Her first poetry collection, Black Spiders, followed a year later, when she was 20.

Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore in Pakistan, the daughter of a Pakistani father and an English mother. She moved to England when she was a few months old, and grew up in Hertfordshire. She didn’t revisit Pakistan until after her first book of poems, The Country at My Shoulder, was published.

Roger McGough was born in Liverpool in 1937, and his career has been inextricably bound to his home city: he came to prominence in the 1960s as one of the beat-inspired, pop-movement ‘Liverpool poets’ – the other two being Adrian Henri and Brian Patten – and has represented Liverpudlian culture ever since.