Biographical note

Christopher Reid is the author of many books of poems, including A Scattering (winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award 2009), The Song of Lunch, Nonsense and The Curiosities. For his first collection of poems for children, All Sorts, he received the Signal Award 2000. From 1991 to 1999 he was Poetry Editor at Faber & Faber, where T.S. Eliot once worked. His Letters of Ted Hughes appeared in 2007 and he is now editing a selection of Seamus Heaney's correspondence for publication in a few years' time. Elliot Elam is a self-trained illustrator living in Walthamstow. Over the years he has illustrated for all sorts of publications, including the BBC, Channel 4, The Big Issue, The Guardian, Penguin Books and Victoria University Press. Elliot has also built theatre sets and painted scenery and carnival floats at Disneyland. He illustrated the cover for Six Bad Poets, also by Christopher Reid.