Martha Kapos was born in America, read Classics at Harvard and then came to London to study Painting and Art History at the Chelsea School of Art. She taught there until 2001, lecturing and writing on art and poetry. Her first poetry publication was a pamphlet from The Many Press in 1989. She won a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1994 and in 2000 was shortlisted for Poetry Review’s Geoffrey Dearmer ‘New Poet of the Year’ award. In 2001 she became assistant poetry editor of Poetry London. A selection of her poems appeared in Oxford Poets 2002: An Anthology, published by Carcanet.

About My Nights in Cupid's Palace:

"These gloriously contemplative poems make tremendous imaginative leaps. Martha Kapos restores to the everyday its “lost profile”. The quotidian and the life of the mind are perfectly balanced, and her voice has that rare combination of freshness and maturity."
—Moniza Alvi

"If one were to imagine a tradition for her, it would include Mallarme and also Wallace Stevens, but these poems are highly original and she has found her own rich and confident voice with which to speak them."
—D. M. Black