Lawrence Joseph

Lawrence Joseph is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Into It and Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos: Poems 1973–1993, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2005.  Codes, Precepts, Biases, and Taboos includes Joseph’s first three books, Shouting at No One (1983), Curriculum Vitae (1988) and Before Our Eyes (1993).  He is also the author of two books of prose: Lawyerland, published by FSG in 1997, and The Game Changed: Essays and Other Prose, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2011 in its Poets on Poetry series.  His work has been translated into several languages, and is widely anthologized, including his poetry in the The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  Among Joseph's awards are a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships.  A graduate of the University of Michigan, Cambridge University, and the University of Michigan Law School, Joseph is presently Tinnelly Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law.  In 2011, the Special Collections Library of the University of Michigan acquired Joseph’s literary, professional, and personal papers, the archive to be held in the University of Michigan’s Hatcher Graduate Library.  Married to the painter Nancy Van Goethem, he lives in downtown Manhattan.