Joseph Massey was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

He is the author of Illocality (Wave Books, 2015) and a trilogy of poetry collections set in Humboldt County, California: To Keep Time (Omnidawn, 2014), At the Point (Shearsman Books, 2011), and Areas of Fog (Shearsman Books, 2009).

Of his poetry, Rae Armantrout writes, “I find it refreshing and somehow also sobering to observe the way Massey sticks so closely to the perceptual world. Like William Carlos Williams, he challenges us to see the value in putting things in words.”

Massey lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts.