Babstock began publishing his poems in journals and anthologies, winning gold at the 1997 Canadian National Magazine Awards.
[1][2] Babstock's first collection in 1999, Mean, won him the Milton Acorn Award and the 2000 Atlantic Poetry Prize.
His poems have won gold at the National Magazine Awards, have been anthologized in Canada and the United States, and have been translated into Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, and Latvian.
[3] Babstock worked as Poetry Faculty at the Banff Centre for the Arts and lives in Toronto, Ontario.
His most recent collection is Swivelmount, released in late 2020 from Coach House Books, and was shortlisted for the ReLit Award for poetry in 2021.