Born in Leeds in 1938, Gordon Jackson was at school with his friend and mentor the poet John Riley, whose work he first printed and published under his Grosseteste Press imprint in 1966. He later published 50 titles of his own work under the Asgill imprint. His working life has been mainly in teacher education, pioneering among other things work on Shakespeare for the primary school. In 1997 Carcanet published The Lincoln Psalter, his Psalm translations.