Shapcott studied as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, St Hilda's College, Oxford, and received a Harkness Fellowship to Harvard. She teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. She was a Visiting Professor at the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University, is a Visiting Professor at the London Institute and was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University from 2003-2005. She is President of the Poetry Society, a longstanding tutor for the Arvon Foundation. Shapcott was appointed as CBE in 2002 however would not attend the presentation ceremony.

Shapcott has won the National Poetry Competition twice, in 1985 and 1991. Her Book: Poems 1988-1998 (2000; reprinted 2006) consists of poetry from her three earlier collections: Electroplating the Baby (1988), which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998), which won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection). Together with Matthew Sweeney, she edited Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996), an international anthology of contemporary poetry in English. Her 2002 book Tender Taxes is a collection of English versions (or translations) of Rainer Maria Rilke's French poems. The Transformers (2011) is a collection of public lectures given by Shapcott as part of her Professorship at Newcastle. Her 2002 collection of essays Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery was co-edited with Linda Anderson. In 2010 she published Of Mutability with Faber and Faber, exploring the nature of change — in the body, within the natural world and inside relationships.

She has written lyrics or had her poems set to music by composers such as Nigel Osborne, Errollyn Wallen and John Woolrich. The American composer Stephen Montague created the work The Creatures Indoors, from her poetry. It was premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre in London in 1997.

In 2006, The Guardian summarised her work in this way

Shapcott remains overwhelmingly a poet of presence, renegotiating the concrete world with as much brio as her own dancing cow. The consummate openness of this brilliantly intelligent selection extends the possibilities for poetry written in English. It reminds us that she remains a pioneer among contemporary British writers. We should be grateful for her.

Prizes and Awards

• 1982 South West Arts Literature Award
• 1985 National Poetry Competition (First Prize)
• 1989 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection Electroplating the Baby
• 1989 New Statesman Prudence Farmer Award
• 1991 National Poetry Competition (First Prize)
• 1999 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) My Life Asleep
• 2002 Created CBE in the Queen's New Years Honours List
• 2006 Cholmondeley Award

Poetry Collections

• Electroplating the Baby Bloodaxe, 1988
• Phrase Book Oxford University Press, 1992
• A Journey to the Inner Eye: A Guide for All. South Bank Centre, 1996
• Motherland Gwaithel & Gilwern, 1996
• Penguin Modern Poets; book 12 (featuring Helen Dunmore, Matthew Sweeney and Jo Shapcott). Penguin Books, 1997
• My Life Asleep, Oxford University Press, 1998
• Poetry Quartets No. 5, (audio featuring Helen Dunmore, U. A. Fanthorpe, Elizabeth Jennings, Jo Shapcott) Bloodaxe, 1999
• Her Book: Poems 1988-1998, Faber and Faber, 2000; reprinted 2006
• Tender Taxes, Faber and Faber, 2002
• Of Mutability Faber and Faber, 2010

Collected prose

• Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery, Bloodaxe, 2002
• The Transformers: The: Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures. Bloodaxe, 2011

Edited collecttions

• Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (edited with Matthew Sweeney) Faber and Faber, 1996
• Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century (edited with Don Paterson) Picador, 1999
• Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery (edited with Linda Anderson) Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Series: 1, 2002

Shapcott's translations (selected)

• The Flute Player Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre
• Stolen Apple, Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre
• Back Again, Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre
• Behind the Mass of Green, Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre
• A Nightingale in the Cage of My Breast, Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre
• Must Escape, Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre
• Forgotten by Time, Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre
• Spring Is Coming, Farzaneh Khojandi, Poetry Translation Centre