He and his identical twin brother, Michael Dickman, also a poet, were born in Portland, Oregon.
Their mother, Wendy Dickman, raised them alone; her stepfather was the father of poet Sharon Olds.
[1][2] After graduate school Matthew Dickman lived in Hudson, New York, but by 2009 both had returned to Portland, where he worked at Whole Foods; both brothers supported themselves with food-service jobs since a joint apprenticeship to a butcher at age thirteen.
[8] Dickman works in advertising where he is a freelance senior copy writer and creative director.
He has been a Visiting Writer at Reed College,[9] and is an adjunct fellow at The Attic institute in Portland.