Polly Atkin was born in Nottingham and lives in Cumbria. Her second poetry pamphlet Shadow Dispatches (Bridgend: Seren, 2013) won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize, 2012. In 2014 her poem A Short History of the Moon won the Wigtown prize, and she was awarded New Writing North's Andrew Waterhouse Prize, for work in progress reflect[ing] a strong sense of place or the natural environment. Since 2014 she has been teaching Creative Writing and English Studies at the University of Strathclyde.