Matthew Hollis was born in 1971 in Norwich. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999 and has published a pamphlet The Boy on the Edge of Happiness (Smith/Doorstop, 1996). He is co-editor of 101 Poems Against War (Faber, 2003) and Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe, 2000), and works as an editor at Faber & Faber. Ground Water is his first full-length collection.

About Ground Water:

"In this sparkling debut, Matthew Hollis immerses us in the undercurrents of our lives. Love and loss are buoyed by a house full of milk, an orchard underwater, the laws of walking on water. Rainwater, floodwater, flux - the liquid landscapes which shift relentlessly in Ground Water - threaten and comfort by turns. Hollis's poems are brimming with courage in adversity as well as the promise of renewal, culminating in a powerful sequence about a father's struggle with terminal illness. Ground Water is a startling first collection from a remarkable new poet. 'Hollis writes a knowing, lyrical poetry set against a landscape of big skies and battened-down horizons. He combines worldly wisdom with more detailed, vernacular understanding to produce poems that speak with a sense of purpose and place'"
—Simon Armitage