Welcome to the poetry of the night. The graveyard shift. The kingdom of the undead. The Night Shift is a celebration of the moon-lit life of the animal kingdom, the nocturnal hungers that wake when the sun goes down. It is also a book about the midnight world of insomniacs, lovers, long-distance drivers, breast-feeding mothers, bouncers, poets, drunks and shift-workers.

Representing the work of over fifty poets, including W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Paul Muldoon, John Clare, Sylvia Plath, Simon Armitage, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dylan Thomas and Carol Ann Duffy, The Night Shift brings together the late-night music of ticking clocks, hooting owls, crying babies and the BBC World Service.

Michael Baron is involved with Words on the Water in the Lake District. He edited the Five Leaves collection On a Bat’s Wing; poems about bats.

Andy Croft has edited several collections for Five Leaves. His latest solo work is The Ghost Writer.

Jenny Swann has written three poetry collections, worked as a poetry editor and now runs Candlestick Press.

John Humphrys is a presenter on BBC Radio 4's Today.