Born in 1957, Sarah Maguire has published three previous collections of poetry, Spilt Milk, The Invisible Mender and The Florist's at Midnight, as well as the anthology Flora Poetica: the Chatto Book of Botanical Verse. She is the founder and director of the Poetry Translation Centre at SOAS, and was co-translator with Yama Yari of Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi's A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear (Chatto, 2006). She is also Founder of the Poetry Translation Centre, responsible for introducing a wide range of international poets into English. Sarah Maguire has lived all her life in west London.