Gibbons has published numerous books, including 11 volumes of poems, translations of poetry from ancient Greek, Spanish, and co-translations from Russian.
He has published short stories, essays, reviews and art in journals and magazines, has held Guggenheim Foundation and NEA fellowships in poetry and a research fellowship from the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C. For his novel, Sweetbitter, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; for his book of poems, Maybe It Was So, he won the Carl Sandburg Prize.
As the editor of TriQuarterly, he edited or co-edited the special issues Chicago (1984), From South Africa: New Writing, Photography and Art (1987), A Window on Poland (1983), Prose from Spain (1983), The Writer in Our World (a symposium of writers including Derek Walcott, Grace Paley, Robert Stone, C. K. Williams, Gloria Emerson, Carolyn Forche, Michael S. Harper, Mary Lee Settle, Ward Just, and others) (1986), Thomas McGrath: Life and the Poem (1987), Writing and Well-Being (1989), New Writing from Mexico (1992), and others, as well as many general issues of the magazine.
As the executor of the literary estate of William Goyen (1915–1983), Gibbons edited four works of Goyen: a posthumous volume of short stories, Had I a Hundred Mouths: New & Selected Stories 1947-1983 (Clarkson Potter, 1985; Persea Books, 1986); Goyen's posthumously published second novel, Half a Look of Cain (Northwestern University Press, 1998); a 50th-Anniversary restored edition of The House of Breath (Northwestern University Press, 2000); and a collection of nonfiction prose, Goyen: Autobiographical Essays, Notebooks, Evocations, Interviews (University of Texas Press / Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Imprint Series, 2007).
With colleagues in the Guild Literary Complex, he also founded BrooksDay, an annual public reading in Chicago of the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks.