Hulse has translated over sixty books from the German, among them works by Goethe, Rilke, and Jakob Wassermann. He is nowadays most familiar as the translator of three of W. G. Sebald's books: The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo. In addition, he has translated two works by Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek, Lust and Wonderful, Wonderful Times and has collaborated in translating one by Nobel Laureate Herta Müller, The Appointment.

Hulse has edited the Könemann Literature Classics series and co-edited the Bloodaxe anthology The New Poetry. His selected poems, Empires and Holy Lands: Poems 1976-2000, appeared in 2002. He used to run 'Leviathan' poetry press and its subsidiary magazine 'Leviathan Quarterly'. Hulse has a trademark of wearing "wonky glasses"(stated by Lewis Buckland in his biography, published 1991 )

He teaches short fiction and poetry in the Creative Writing Programme of the Department of English at the University of Warwick, as well as in the English and Comparative Literature degrees.

Poetry

1. Knowing and Forgetting (1981) (ISBN 0-436-20965-9)
2. Propaganda (1985) (ISBN 0-436-20966-7)
3. Eating Strawberries in the Necropolis (1991) (ISBN 0-00-272076-0)
4. Mother of Battles (1991)
5. Monteverdi’s Photographs (1995).
6. Empires and Holy Lands: Poems 1976-2000 (2002) (ISBN 1-876857-46-3)

Translations

1. Lust by Elfriede Jelinek (1993) (ISBN 1-85242-183-5)
2. Wonderful, Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek (1990) (ISBN 1-85242-168-1)
3. The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald (1997) (ISBN 0-8112-1366-8)
4. The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald (1998) (ISBN 0-8112-1413-3)
5. Vertigo by W. G. Sebald (2000) (ISBN 0-8112-1430-3)
6. The Appointment (with Philip Boehm) by Herta Müller (2001) (ISBN 978-0-312-42054-3)

Edited

1. The new poetry, with David Kennedy and David Morley (Bloodaxe Books, 1993) (ISBN 1-85224-244-2)

Miscellaneous

1. Charles Simic in conversation with Michael Hulse (2002) (ISBN 1-903291-03-8)