Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet, editor and literary critic. The Memory Tray (Seren, 1995) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her other works are Signs Round a Dead Body (Seren, 1998), Quiver (Seren, 2004), and a critical book, Consorting with Angels (Bloodaxe, 2005), was published alongside her accompanying anthology Modern Women Poets (Bloodaxe, 2005).

In 2004 she was named as one of Mslexia’s ‘top ten’ women poets of the decade, and in 2010 she won a Cholmondeley Award. Her collection Burying the Wren (Seren, 2012) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and a Times Literary Supplement book of the year. It was also selected for the Exchange's Autumn Bookcase 2012.

A regular collaborator with contemporary artists, her work And You, Helen (Seren, 2014) takes the form of a book and animated poem made with the artist Charlotte Hodes about the wife and widow of the poet Edward Thomas.

Most recently she has turned to writing about art, and her book about the Portuguese artist, Paula Rego: The Art of Story, was recently published by Thames & Hudson. Her selected poems, What It's Like to Be Alive, was published in 2016 and was a PBS Special Commendation. Her new collection of poems, Erato, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was published in 2019, and selected for the 2019 Bookcase. An exhibition of text and image, The Errant Muse, with the artist Charlotte Hodes, is currently on show at the Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool from mid-November until the end of March.

She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool, and is the editor of the award winning Pavilion Poetry list.

Her most recent poetry collection, Erato (Seren, 2019), was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year Award in the poetry category in 2020.