Between 1983 and 1999, I lived in Winchester, where I met my wife, Creina, at a poetry workshop. We were married in 1986. In 1994 I undertook a PhD in English at Southampton University; my dissertation was on the Scottish poet W.S. Graham. After graduating, I took up a post as lecturer in Creative Writing at the (then) University of Glamorgan in 1999. In 2003, I became a lecturer at Aberystwyth University, and I was promoted to professor in 2014. I retired in 2023, and am now professor emeritus, retaining a connection with the university.

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I have won the TLS / Blackwell's Prize for Poetry and the Southern Arts Literature Prize, and been shortlisted twice for the Forward Prize, twice for the Welsh Book of the Year Award and once for the Ted Hughes Award. In 2004 I was chosen for the Next Generation Poets list of the twenty best UK poets to have been first published in the preceding decade. I am a Fellow of the Welsh Academy.

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I am the younger brother of the novelist and biographer Richard Francis.

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My hobbies are chess, cooking, walking and playing the ukulele. I am chair of Aberystwyth Town Chess Club.