David Wheatley was born in Dublin in 1970 and lives in rural Aberdeenshire. His previous collec-tions, published by Gallery Press, are Thirst (1997; Rooney Prize for Irish Literature), Misery Hill (2000), Mocker (2006) and A Nest on the Waves (2010). A prolific critic, he has edited the Poems of James Clarence Mangan for Gallery Press (2003) and the Selected Poems of Samuel Beckett for Faber & Faber (2009). His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, and has been awarded a variety of prizes, including the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize and first prize in the Friends Provident National Poetry Competition. He has been praised by the TLS as numbering among ‘our finest poets’, and by Poetry London for his ‘sardonic and devastating wit’.