Norman Jope was born in 1960 in Plymouth, where he currently lives, after lengthy spells in other locations (most recently Bristol and Budapest) and is closely involved with the Plymouth Language Club, a long-established live poetry collective based in the city.

His book publications near double figures, and include: For the Wedding-Guest (Stride, 1997), The Book of Bells and Candles (Waterloo Press, 2009), Dreams of the Caucasus (Shearsman Books, 2010), with his latest poetry collection being Lands of Lost Content (Waterloo Press, 2024).

With the late Ian Robinson, Jope co-edited the anthology In the Presence of Sharks: New Poetry from Plymouth (Phlebas, 2006). He was the editor of the literary and cultural magazine Memes and co-edited a Critical Companion to Richard Berengarten (Salt, 2011).