Stephen Payne was born in Merthyr Tydfil and lives in Penarth, South Glamorgan. His first full collection, Pattern Beyond Chance, was published in 2015 by HappenStance Press and shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. His second collection, The Windmill Proof, was published by the same press in September 2021 and followed, in February 2022 by a pamphlet The Wax Argument & Other Thought Experiments. Payne is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Bath where his teaching and research interests were in Cognitive Science and Human-Computer Interaction. These scientific interests inform his poetry, sometimes directly, sometimes more obliquely.
