Strand was born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada. His early years were spent in North America, while much of his teenage years were spent in South and Central America. In 1957, he earned his B.A. from Antioch College in Ohio. Strand then studied painting under Josef Albers at Yale University where he earned a B.F.A in 1959. On a Fulbright Scholarship, Strand studied nineteenth-century Italian poetry in Italy during 1960-1961.

He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa the following year and earned a Master of Arts in 1962. In 1965 he spent a year in Brazil as a Fulbright Lecturer. His academic career has taken him to numerous colleges and universities to teach. A partial list:

Teaching positions

• University of Iowa, Iowa City, instructor in English, 1962-1965
• University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Fulbright lecturer, 1965-1966
• Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, assistant professor, 1967
• Columbia University, New York City, adjunct associate professor, 1969-1972
• Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, New York City, associate professor, 1970-1972
• Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Bain-Swiggett Lecturer, 1973
• Brandeis University, Hurst professor of poetry, 1974-1975
• University of Utah, Salt Lake City, professor of English, 1981-1993
• Johns Hopkins University, Elliot Coleman Professor of Poetry, 1994-c. 1998
• University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, 1998...

Visiting professor at

• University of Washington, 1968, 1970
• Columbia University, 1980
• Yale University, 1969-1970
• University of Virginia, 1976, 1978
• California State University at Fresno, 1977
• University of California at Irvine, 1979
• Wesleyan University, 1979
• Harvard University, 1980

In 1997, he left Johns Hopkins University to accept the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professorship of Social Thought at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Since 2006, Strand has been teaching literature and creative writing at Columbia University, in New York City.

In 1981, Strand was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress during the 1990-1991 term. Strand has received numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1999 for Blizzard of One.

Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• 1960–1961: Fulbright Fellowship
• 1979: Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets
• 1987: MacArthur Fellowship
• 1990–1991: Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress
• 1992: Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry
• 1993: Bollingen Prize
• 1999: Pulitzer Prize, for Blizzard of One
• 2004: Wallace Stevens Award

Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article for works of poetry or "[year] in literature" article for other works:

Poetry

• 1964: Sleeping with One Eye Open, Stone Wall Press
• 1968: Reasons for Moving: Poems, Atheneum
• 1970: Darker: Poems, including "The New Poetry Handbook", Atheneum
• 1973: The Story of Our Lives, Atheneum
• 1973: The Sargentville Notebook, Burning Deck
• 1978: Elegy for My Father, Windhover
• 1978: The Late Hour, Atheneum
• 1980: Selected Poems, including "Keeping Things Whole", Atheneum
• 1990: The Continuous Life, Knopf
• 1990: New Poems
• 1991: The Monument, Ecco Press (see also The Monument, 1978, prose)
• 1993: Dark Harbor: A Poem, long poem divided into 55 sections, Knopf
• 1998: Blizzard of One: Poems, Knopf winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for poetry
• 1999: Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More, with illustrations by the author
• 1999: "89 Clouds" a single poem, monotypes by Wendy Mark and introduction by Thomas Hoving, ACA Galleries (New York)
• 2006: Man and Camel, Knopf
• 2007: New Selected Poems

Prose

• 1978: The Monument, Ecco (see also The Monument, 1991, poetry)
• 1982: Contributor: Claims for Poetry, edited by Donald Hall, University of Michigan Press
• 1982: The Planet of Lost Things, for children
• 1983: The Art of the Real, art criticism, C. N. Potter
• 1985: The Night Book, for children
• 1985: Mr. and Mrs. Baby and Other Stories, short stories, Knopf
• 1986: Rembrandt Takes a Walk, for children
• 1987: William Bailey, art criticism, Abrams
• 1993: Contributor: Within This Garden: Photographs by Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Columbia College Chicago/Aperture Foundation
• 1994: Hopper, art criticism, Ecco Press
• 2000: The Weather of Words: Poetic Invention, Knopf
• 2000: With Eavan Boland, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Norton (New York)

Poetry translations

• 1971: 18 Poems from the Quechua, Halty Ferguson
• 1973: The Owl's Insomnia, poems by Rafael Alberti, Atheneum
• 1976: Souvenir of the Ancient World, poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Antaeus Editions
• 2002: Looking for Poetry: Poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Rafael Alberti, with Songs from the Quechua
• 1993: Contributor: "Canto IV", Dante's Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets edited by Daniel Halpern, Harper Perennial
• 1986, according to one source, or 1987, according to another source: Traveling in the Family, poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, with Thomas Colchie; translator with Elizabeth Bishop, Colchie, and Gregory Rabassa) Random House

Editor

• 1968: The Contemporary American Poets, New American Library
• 1970: New Poetry of Mexico, Dutton
• 1976: Another Republic: Seventeen European and South American Writers, with Charles Simic, Ecco
• 1991: The Best American Poetry 1991, Macmillan
• 1994: Golden Ecco Anthology, Ecco Press
• 1994: The Golden Ecco Anthology
• 2005: 100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century, W. W. Norton