Born and brought up in Birmingham, John Goodby has lived since his late teens in Yorkshire, Ireland, and Wales, where he currently lectures in English literature at Swansea University. He has written extensively on Irish, Welsh and English poetry, and his own poetry has appeared in Angel Exhaust, Stand and Poetry Review , among other journals.

His poetry translations include Heine's Germany: A Winter's Tale (Smokestack, 2005) and, with Tom Cheesman, Adel Guémar's State of Emergency (Arc, 2007). He is the artistic director of the Boiled String poetry performance troupe and co-organiser with Lyndon Davies of the annual Hay-on-Wye Poetry Jamboree.