She lived in Hemel Hempstead and attended Cavendish School in the town prior to studying as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin.

She initially accepted the honour but decided to refuse during the period when the British government made preparations to invade Iraq.

Together with Matthew Sweeney, she edited Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996), an international anthology of contemporary poetry in English.

Her 2002 book Tender Taxes is a collection of English versions (or translations) of Rainer Maria Rilke's French poems.

In 2006, Fiona Samson in The Guardian summarised her work: "Shapcott remains overwhelmingly a poet of presence, renegotiating the concrete world with as much brio as her own dancing cow.

Sinclair Mackay in the Daily Telegraph wrote: "Of Mutability, is so especially rich and resonant that it deserves the widest possible readership, even among those who never usually think of reading poems...And there is a dazzling variety of tone and colour and subject throughout - Shapcott's language dances lightly, and often with wit.

She has written lyrics or had her poems set to music by composers such as Nigel Osborne, Errollyn Wallen and John Woolrich.