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 Lewis Warsh 2007, photo by Marie Warsh
November 9th, 1944 in the Bronx.
His father was the principal of a
public school in East Harlem and
his mother was a reading teacher
in a public school in the South
Bronx. Warsh attended the
Bronx High School of Science
and City College of New York,
where he received a B.A. In 1966
and an M.A. in 1975, both in English. He lived in the Bronx with his
parents, in an apartment at 2194 Barnes Ave., for seventeen years.
In 1962 his parents moved to 355 8th Avenue in Manhattan, and in 1964
Warsh moved to his own apartment at 325 E. 10th Street. He lived there
only a few months before moving uptown to an apartment in a low income
housing project on 125th Street and Amsterdam. He began writing poetry
and fiction in his early teens, and first published his poems in Wild
Dog Magazine, an issue guest-edited by Joanne Kyger in 1965. Summer
of 1965 he attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference where he met Anne
Waldman. In the fall and winter of 1965-66 he lived at 188 E. 3rd
Street in Manhattan. In spring 1966 he found a floor-through apartment
at 33 St. Mark’s Place where he lived until 1969. During this time he
and Waldman founded Angel Hair Magazine and Books. He was part of
a community of writers centered around The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s
Church on the Lower East Side. This community included Ted Berrigan,
Bernadette Mayer, Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard and George Schneeman,
among many others. During this time Warsh’s first books of poems
appeared -- The Suicide Rates, Highjacking and Moving Through Air.
 Marie Warsh, Max Warsh, Sophia Warsh c. 1984
Bolinas, California where his
neighbors included Joanne
Kyger, Tom Clark, Bill Berkson,
Bobbie Louise Hawkins and
Robert Creeley. In spring 1971
he coordinated the reading
series at Intersection in San
Francisco and from 1972 to
1973 lived in Stinson Beach,
California. From 1973 to 1974 he lived in Cambridge, Mass., in an apartment
near Inman Square, where he co-edited The Boston Eagle with William
Corbett and Lee Harwood, before returning to New York in 1974. He lived
at 216 E. 10th St. in Manhattan and taught a poetry workshop at the
St. Mark’s Poetry Project. A book of poems, Dreaming As One, was published
in 1971, and a book of autobiographical writing, Part of My History, in 1972.
 Max Warsh, Marie Warsh, Sophia Warsh c. 2004
Bernadette Mayer, to a 200
year old farmhouse in
Worthington, Mass., where
his daughter Marie was born.
From 1976 to 1979 he lived
at 100 Main St. in Lenox, Mass.,
where he and Mayer founded
United Artists Magazine and
Books. His daughter Sophia
was born in Lenox and he finished his first novel, Agnes & Sally,
subsequently published in 1984. In 1979 he, Mayer and children moved
to Henniker, New Hampshire, where he taught at New England College,
and where his son Max was born. In 1980 he returned to New York,
to an apartment at 172 E. 4th Street, where he wrote his second novel,
A Free Man, and continued publishing United Artists.
 Lewis Warsh & Katt Lissand, 2007
5th Ave. in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and 40
Clinton St. in Manhattan, before moving to
an apartment at 701 President St. in Brooklyn
where he lived from 1989 until 1998. He
published numerous books during this time,
including Methods of Birth Control and
Information from the Surface of Venus.
Between 1985 and 2007 he taught at Queens
College, Fairleigh Dickinson University,
Naropa University, SUNY Albany, The New
School, The Poetry Project and Long Island
University. He is presently an associate professor in the English Department
at Long Island University and director of the MFA program in creative writing.
In 1994 he traveled in China and Tibet and co-translated, with Wang Ping,
numerous contemporary Chinese and Tibetan poets.
 Lewis Warsh, 2007
numerous anthologies, including
The Best American Poetry (1997,
2002, 2003), What Is Poetry?
(2003),The Body Electric (2000),
Primary Trouble (1996), American
Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th
Century (1996), From the Other
Side of the Century: American
Poetry 1960-1990 (1993), Another
World (1971),The Young American Poets (1967). He has received grants for
his writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York
Foundation of the Arts, The Creative Artists Public Service Foundation, The
Fund for Poetry and The Poet’s Foundation. In 1993 he received the James
Shestack award from The American Poetry Review. He was one of the first
editors in the country to receive the Editor’s Fellowship Award from the
Coordinating Council on Literary Magazines.
From 1998 until 2002 Warsh lived at 112 Milton St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
He presently lives on West 16th St. in Manhattan with his wife, Katt Lissard.
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