Paul Groves is a poet, critic and Creative Writing Lecturer, a staple of British literary periodicals over a five-decade career. He has won many accolades, including an Eric Gregory Award (1976) and The Times Literary Supplement prize twice (1986, 2007), and has five critically acclaimed collections to his name: Academe (1988). Ménage à Trois (1995), Eros and Thanatos (1999), Wowsers (2002) and Qwerty (2008), plus a memoir Country Boy (2007). 

He would describe himself as a ruralist, though not necessarily a Nature poet.  His wide-ranging subject matter targets the human condition in all its quirkiness and complexity.  His aim is to be accessible: as Adrian Mitchell said, ‘Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.” His work is finely balanced between rhyme and free verse; in several of his books such material alternates. 

His poetry often deals not with the overtly religious but with the spiritual.  It regards death as a stepping stone, not a brick wall. His lightness of touch is everywhere visible. To continue the metaphor, it can resemble a pebble skimmed across a lake rather than a concrete block dropped into its depths. To regard it as light verse, however, would be a mistake. Joys and sorrows jostle for position. It shares much of the impetus of the Movement poetry of the 1950s and 1960s, aiming to avoid pretentious excess and to concentrate on the importance of the English Tradition as opposed to American-led modernism. As such he trusts it will stand the test of time.