Frank Ormsby was born in 1947 in Enniskillen and educated at Queen's University, Belfast. He was head of English at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution from 1976 until 2010. As editor of The Honest Ulsterman magazine for twenty years and editor of a number of influential anthologies, such as Poets from the North of Ireland and A Rage for Order: Poetry of the Northern Ireland Troubles, he was a central figure in the burgeoning of Ulster poetry since the 1960s. He has also published eight collections of poems, most recently Goat's Milk: New and Selected Poems, The Darkness of Snow, and The Rain Barrel.