This year marks the tenth anniversary of The Poetry School. I Am Twenty People! celebrates this occasion, and is the third anthology of an ongoing series from Enitharmon Press that aims to bring the work of new poets to a wider readership. At the time of acceptance, none of the poets included in I Am Twenty People! had published a full-length volume, although some now have books forthcoming. The majority of contributors to the first anthology went on to publish collections. Contributors to both previous anthologies number among their successes a shortlisting for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Poem, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Jerwood/Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection, New Writing Ventures Awards, the Poetry Society's Hamish Canham Prize and Poetry Book Society Recommendations.

Mimi Khalvati was born in Iran and grew up on the Isle of Wight. Her five collections include her Selected Poems (2000) and The Chine (2002). She is the founder of The Poetry School and has co-edited its anthologies of new writing, Tying the Song (with Pascale Petit) and Entering the Tapestry (with Graham Fawcett), published by Enitharmon Press. She currently holds a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at City University. In 2006 she received a Cholmondeley Award and a new collection, The Meanest Flower, is forthcoming in 2007. Stephen Knight's books of poetry include Flowering Limbs and Dream City Cinema ( both shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize), as well as a novel, Mr Schnitzel . Awards include first prize in the 1992 National Poetry Competition. He is a creative-writing tutor for adults in colleges and part of the University of Glamorgan's MPhil in Writing.