Polly Atkin is a poet and nonfiction writer, living in the English Lake District. Her first poetry collection Basic Nest Architecture (Seren: 2017) is followed by Much With Body (Seren, 2021), supported a 2020 Northern Writers Award. She has also published three pamphlets: bone song (Aussteiger, 2008), Shadow Dispatches (Seren, 2013) and With Invisible Rain (New Walk: 2018). Her biography of Recovering Dorothy: The Hidden Life of Dorothy Wordsworth (Saraband, 2021), is the first to focus on Dorothy’s later life and illness. She is working on a memoir exploring place, belonging and disability. She has taught English and Creative Writing at QMUL, Lancaster University, and the Universities of Strathclyde and Cumbria. In 2019 she co-founded the Open Mountain initiative at Kendal Mountain Festival, which seeks to centre voices that are currently at the margins of outdoor, mountain and nature writing.