Philip Metres was born in San Diego and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He received his PhD in English and an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University in 2001.

Metres is the author of six poetry collections: Fugitive/Refuge (Copper Canyon Press, 2024); Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon Press, 2020); Pictures at an Exhibition (University of Akron Press, 2016); Sand Opera (Alice James Books, 2015); A Concordance of Leaves (Diode Editions, 2013), winner of the 2014 Arab American Book Award; and To See the Earth (Cleveland State University Press, 2008). He has also translated the works of such Russian poets as Sergey Gandlevsky, Lev Rubinstein, and Arseny Tarkovsky.

Metres is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation, and is also a winner of the Cleveland Arts Prize. He is a professor of English at John Carroll University and the director of the University’s peace, justice, and human rights program.