The magazine is published by Partus Press.

Founded in 1910 by Basil Blackwell, its editors have included Dorothy L. Sayers, Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Kingsley Amis, Anthony Thwaite, John Fuller and Bernard O'Donoghue.

Among the authors to have appeared in Oxford Poetry are Fleur Adcock, A. Alvarez, W. H. Auden, Anne Carson, Nevill Coghill, David Constantine, Robert Crawford, Carol Ann Duffy, Elaine Feinstein, Graham Greene, Seamus Heaney, W. N. Herbert, Geoffrey Hill, Christopher Isherwood, Elizabeth Jennings, Jenny Joseph, Stephen Knight, Ronald Knox, Philip Larkin, Cecil Day-Lewis, Michael Longley, Louis MacNeice, Peter McDonald, Christopher Middleton, Andrew Motion, Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Mario Petrucci, Craig Raine, Jo Shapcott, Stephen Spender, George Szirtes, J. R. R. Tolkien, Susan Wicks and Charles Wright.

As well as publishing two issues per year, the magazine hosts the annual Oxford Poetry Prize.

[3] Before the inauguration of the Oxford Poetry Prize in 2022, the magazine traditionally published the winners of Oxford's Newdigate Prize.