'Prince Rupert's drop', a rare curiosity of the glass-making process, is a tear of glass at once immensely resilient yet spectacularly fragile, exploding dramatically when shattered. This tension - between the present beauty and the sense of inevitable loss inherent in the things we most admire - is a key to many of the poems in Jane Draycott's work, particularly to the long central poem 'Braving the Dark', written after her brother's death from AIDS at the age of 30. This is Jane Draycott's first collection of poems. It follows a pamphlet, No Theatre, that was a first-stage winner of the Poetry Business Competition (1996) and was most unusually shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 1997. She is also the co-author of Christina the Astonishing (Two Rivers Press, 1998). Jane Draycott has lived and taught in London, Strasbourg and Tanzania, and was for a while co-director of a small theatre company, Four Corners. She now works in adult education and lives in Oxfordshire.