Andrew Buchanan Jackson was born in Glasgow in 1965 and raised in Bramhall, Cheshire. He attended Bell Baxter High School in Cupar, Fife, and studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He now lives in Leeds.

He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Sheffield Hallam University, thesis title 'The Polar Sublime in Contemporary Poetry of Arctic and Antarctic Exploration'.

His first book, Fire Stations, was published by Anvil Press in 2003, and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection that year.

In 2010 he won first prize in the Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition, and in 2011 Donut Press published a limited edition pamphlet, Apocrypha, which was the PBS Pamphlet Choice for Summer 2011.

His second full collection, The Wilderness Party (Bloodaxe Books), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in autumn 2015.

From 2016 to 2019 he was a co-selector for the Poetry Book Society's quarterly Pamphlet Choice.

His latest collection is The Voyage of St Brendan from Bloodaxe Books, 2021.

Poems have appeared in the following publications:

• The caught habits of language: an entertainment for W.S. Graham for him having reached one hundred (Donut Press, 2018)
  
• The rose of temperaments (Longbarrow Press, 2018)
  
• One for the road: an anthology of pubs and poetry (Smith|Doorstop, 2017)
  
• The best British poetry 2013 (Salt, 2013)
  
• Birdbook II: freshwater habitats (Sidekick Books, 2012)
  
• Split screen: poetry inspired by film & television (Red Squirrel Press, 2012)
  
• Poems of the decade: an anthology of the Forward books of poetry 2002-2011 (Faber, 2011)
  
• Identity parade: new British & Irish poets (Bloodaxe, 2010)
  
• The book of St Andrews (Polygon, 2005)
  
• Forward book of poetry 2004 (Faber, 2003)
  
• When the words won't come (British Stammering Association, 2003)
  
• Anvil new poets 3 (Anvil Press, 2001)
  
• The message: crossing the tracks between poetry and pop (The Poetry Society, 1999)