[6] Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1947, Joyce was brought up between Mary Street, in the city centre, and the Galway Gaeltacht.

Early books include Sole Glum Trek (1967), Watches (1969), Pentahedron (1972) and The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine: A Working of the Corrupt Irish Text (1976).

He has also published several papers on contemporary poetics, and has lectured and given public readings of his work throughout Ireland, the UK and the USA.

In 2004 he was elected a member of Aosdána, the Irish Affiliation of Artists, and was the first writer to be awarded a fellowship by the Ballinglen Arts Foundation.

[10] In 2017 he was named by previous winner, the English poet Tom Raworth, as the latest recipient of the biennial N. C. Kaser prize for poetry.

Flood and ebb encompass me; lunar phases can't affect the homicidal iron I dread