Jo Shapcott is what can be typed an observational poet. She writes about her own life, exploring the beauty and the horror which she sees in daily and even exceptional events. In her poetry, Shapcott devotes herself to portraying her own experiences as otherworldly, as if they had never before been experienced by a person. This process is achievable because of Shapcott's intense vulnerability in revealing how her person interacts with daily events, on a highly personal level. For example, she writes "Procedure" about the intimate memories which making tea elicit from her imagination. The process of tea making sends Shapcott deep into her memory, almost without her will.
Because she writes about her own life, Shapcott's poetry is both as interesting as her occupations and as engaging as her imagination. She has a knack for transforming the ordinary into the unreal and the extraordinary into the mundane and acceptable. For instance, "Era" presents a walk in the park like an underwater dive. Shapcott expresses a sort of out of body experience in the ordinary activity of walking through a familiar place. Compare this with the intense subject of "Phrase Book." Shapcott has traveled abroad to presumably a war zone or at least a place where training activities are taking place and being broadcasted on TV. She narrates this story as if the natural confusion of not speaking the language is comparable to the nerves of entertaining guests in one's home. There is a marriage of the extraordinary with the expected and familiar.
