Michael Ford grew up in the Austin neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. From 1999 to 2009, he lived in New Orleans. In his poems, he often attempts to create verbal approximations of landscape paintings of those two cities, with impossible details added to each scene. He is the author of Carbon and Where We Expect to See You Soon (both from Ugly Duckling Presse), and Olympia Street (published by Trembling Pillow Press).