Waldman was born in Millville, New Jersey, but only lived in New Jersey very briefly. She was raised on MacDougal Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, and received her B.A. from Bennington College in 1966. During the 1960s, Waldman became part of the East Coast poetry scene, in part through her engagement with the poets and artists loosely termed the Second Generation of the New York School. During this time, Waldman also made manyconnections with earlier generations of poets, including figures such as Allen Ginsberg, who once called Waldman his "spiritual wife." From 1966-1968 she served as Assistant Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's, and from 1968-1978 she served as the Project's Director.

In the early 1960s, Waldman became a student of Buddhism. In the 1970s, along with Allen Ginsberg, she began to study with the Tibetan Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In 1974, with Trungpa, Ginsberg, and others, Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado (now Naropa University), where she remains a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and the Director of Naropa's famous Summer Writing Program.

In 1976, Waldman and Ginsberg were featured in Bob Dylan's film, Renaldo and Clara. They worked on the film while traveling through New England and Canada with the Rolling Thunder Revue, a concert tour that made impromptu stops, entertaining enthusiastic crowds with poetry and music. Waldman, Ginsberg, and Dylan were joined on these caravans by musicians such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Eric Anderson, and Joe Cocker. Waldman reveled in the experience, and she often thought of recreating the poetry caravan.

Waldman married Reed Bye in 1980, and their son, Edwin Ambrose Bye was born on October 21, 1980. The birth of her son was an "inspiring turning point" for Waldman, and she became passionately interested in and deeply committed to the survival of the planet. Her child, she said, became her teacher. . He inspired her poem, "Number Song" in which she writes, "I sing of my son." Waldman and Ambrose Bye occasionally perform poetry together, and the two have created a YouTube channel entitled Fast Speaking Music that features music and poetry videos.

Waldman has been a fervent activist for social change. In the 1970s, she was involved with the Rocky Flats Truth Force, an organization opposed to the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility ten miles to the south of Boulder, CO. With Daniel Ellsberg and Allen Ginsberg she was arrested for protesting outside of the site. She has been a vocal proponent for feminist, environmental, and human rights causes, an active participant in Poets Against the War, and she has helped organize protests in New York and Washington, D.C.

Although her work is sometimes connected to the Beat Generation, Waldman has never been a "Beat" poet, strictly speaking. Her work, like the work of her contemporaries in the 1970s New York milieu of which she was a vital part--writers like Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer, to name only two--is more diverse in its influences and ambitions. Waldman is particularly interested in the performance of her poetry: she considers performance a "ritualized event in time," and she expresses the energy of her poetry through exuberant breathing, chanting, singing, and movement. Waldman credits her poem, Fast Speaking Woman, as the seminal work that galvanized her idea of poetry as performance. Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Lawrence Ferlinghetti - all encouraged her to continue to perform her poetry.

Waldman has published more than forty books of poetry [see bibliography below]. Her work has been widely anthologized, and her poems have been translated into French, Italian, German, Turkish, Spanish, and Chinese. Waldman is also the editor of several volumes relating to modern, postmodern, and contemporary poetry. Over the course of her career, Waldman has also been a tireless collaborator, producing works with artists Elizabeth Murray, Richard Tuttle, George Schneeman, Donna Dennis, Pat Steir; musicians Don Cherry and Steve Lacy; dancer Douglas Dunn; filmmaker and husband Ed Bowes; and her son, musician/composer Ambrose Bye.

Waldman has been a Fellow at the Emily Harvey Foundation (Winter 2007) and the Bellagio Center in Italy (Spring 2006). She has also held residencies at the Christian Woman’s University of Tokyo (Fall 2004); the Schule Für Dichtung in Vienna (where she has also served as Curriculum Director in 1989); the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (1984). She has served as an advisor to the Prazska Skola Projekt in Prague, the Study Abroad on the Bowery (since 2004), and has been a faculty member in the New England College Low Residency MFA Program (since 2003). She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Contemporary Artists Foundation, among others. With writer and scholar Ammiel Alcalay, she founded the Poetry is News Coalition in 2002.

Her archive of historical, literary, art, tape, and extensive correspondence materials (including many prominent literary correspondents, such as: William S. Burroughs, Robert Creeley, Diane Di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, and Ken Kesey) resides at the University of Michigan's Hatcher Graduate Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A 55-minute film titled “Anne Waldman: Makeup on Empty Space,” a film by poet Jim Cohn, documents the opening of the Anne Waldman Collection at the University of Michigan.

Books & Pamphlets

• Manatee/Humanity, Penguin Poets, 2009
• Red Noir (performance pieces) Farfalla, McMillen, Parrish, 2007
• Outrider, La Alameda Press, 2006
• Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, Penguin Poets, 2004.
• In the Room of Never Grieve: New & Selected Poems 1985 — 2003, Coffee House Press, 2003.
• Dark Arcana / Afterimage or Glow, Heaven Bone Press, 2003.
• [Things] Seen Unseen, 2002.
• War Crime, 2002.
• Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos, Coffee House Press, 2001.
• Marriage: A Sentence, Penguin Poets, 2000.
• Iovis II, Coffee House Press, 1997.
• Fast Speaking Woman, 20th Anniversary Edition, City Lights Books, 1996.
• Kill or Cure, Penguin Poets, 1996.
• lovis: All Is Full of Jove, Coffee House Press, 1993.
• Troubairitz, Fifth Planet Press, 1993.
• Fait Accompli, Last Generation Press, 1992.
• Lokapala, Rocky Ledge, 1991.
• Not a Male Pseudonym, Tender Buttons Books, 1990.
• Helping the Dreamer: New and Selected Poems: 1966-1988, Coffee House Press, 1989.
• Tell Me About It, Bloody Twin Press, 1989.
• The Romance Thing, Bamberger Books, 1987.
• Blue Mosque, United Artists, 1987.
• Skin Meat Bones, Coffee House Press, 1985.
• Makeup on Empty Space, Toothpaste Press, 1984.
• First Baby Poems, Rocky Ledge, 1982, augmented edition, Hyacinth Girls, 1983.
• Cabin, Z Press, 1981.
• Countries, Toothpaste Press, 1980.
• To a Young Poet, White Raven, 1979.
• Shaman / Shamane, White Raven, 1977.
• Hotel Room, Songbird, 1976.
• Journals and Dreams, Stonehill, 1976.
• Fast Speaking Woman and Other Chants, City Lights, 1975 (revised edition, 1978).
• Sun the Blonde Out, Arif, 1975.
• Fast Speaking Woman, Red Hanrahan Press, 1974.
• The Contemplative Life, Alternative Press, c. 1974.
• Life Notes: Selected Poems, Bobbs-Merrill, 1973.
• The West Indies Poems, Adventures in Poetry, 1972.
• Spin Off, Big Sky, 1972.
• Light and Shadow, Privately printed, 1972.
• Holy City, privately printed, 1971.
• No Hassles, Kulchur Foundation, 1971.
• Icy Rose, Angel Hair, 1971.
• Baby Breakdown, Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.
• Giant Night: Selected Poems, Corinth Books, 1970.
• Up Through the Years, Angel Hair, 1970.
• O My Life!, Angel Hair, 1969.
• On the Wing, Boke, 1968.

Poetry Collaborations

• Fleuve Flâneur (with Mary Kite), Erudite Fangs, 2004.
• Zombie Dawn (with Tom Clark), Skanky Possum Press, 2003.
• Polemics (with Anselm Hollo & Jack Collom), Autonomedia.
• Young Manhattan (with Bill Berkson).
• Ai Lit / Holy (with Eleni Sikelianos & Laird Hunt), 2001.
• Polar Ode (With Eileen Myles), Dead Duke, 1979.
• Four Travels (With Reed Bye), Sayonara, 1979.
• Sphinxeries (With Denyse duRoi), 1979.
• Self Portrait (With Joe Brainard), Siamese Banana Press, 1973.
• Memorial Day (With Ted Berrigan), Poetry Project, 1971.

Audio Recordings

• Matching Half (music by Ambrose Bye) with Akilah Oliver, 2007
• The Eye of The Falcon (music by Ambrose Bye) 2006.
• In the Room of Never Grieve (music by Ambrose Bye)
• By the Side of the Road (with Ishtar Kramer), 2003.
• Battery: Live from Naropa, 2003.
• Alchemical Elegy: Selected Songs and Writings, Fast Speaking Music, 2001.
• Beat Poetry, ABM, London,1999.
• Jazz Poetry, ABM, London,1999.
• Women of The Beat Generation, Audio-Literature, 1996.
• Live in Amsterdam, Soyo Productions, 1992.
• Assorted Singles, Phoebus Productions,1990.
• Made Up in Texas, Paris Records (Dallas), 1986.
• Crack in the World, Sounds True (Boulder),1986.
• Uh-Oh Plutonium!, Hyacinth Girls Music (NYC), 1982.
• Fast Speaking Woman, "S" Press Tapes (Munich), n.d.
• John Giorno and Anne Waldman, Giorno Poetry Systems Records, 1977.
• Beauty and the Beast (With Allen Ginsberg), Naropa Institute, 1976.
• Other recordings include The Dial-a-Poem Poets, Disconnected and The Nova Convention,

Big Ego, Giorno Poetry Systems, and The World Record.

Film and Video

• Colors In the Mechanism of Concealment, with Ed Bowes, 2004.
• The Menage (for Carl Rakosi), with Ed Bowes, 2003.
• Live at Naropa, Phoebus Productions, 1990.
• Battle of the Bards, (Lannan Foundation), Metropolitan Pictures, Los Angeles, 1990.
• Eyes in All Heads, Phoebus Productions, 1989.
• “Uh-Oh Plutonium!” (1982), first prize at the American Film Festival, Manhattan Video Project,

Out There Productions (NYC).

• Cooked Diamonds, Fried Shoes, with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Meredith Monk
• Poetry in Motion, directed by Ron Mann, Sphinx Productions (Toronto).
• Also performed in Bob Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara (1978), with a recording of the poem Fast Speaking Woman included on the sound track.

Editor

• Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (with Lisa Birman), Coffee House Press, 2004.
• The Angel Hair Anthology: Angel Hair Sleeps With A Boy In My Head (with Lewis Warsh), Granary Books, 2001.
• The Beat Book, Shambhala Publications, Boston, 1996.
• Disembodied Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School, University of New Mexico Press, 1993.
• Out of This World: An Anthology from The Poetry Project at the St. Mark's Church In-the-Bowery 1966-1991, Crown Publishing Group, 1991.
• Nice to See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan, Coffee House Press, 1991.
• Talking Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (with Marilyn Webb), Shambhala, vols. 1 and 2, 1978.
• Another World, Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.
• The World Anthology: Poems from the St. Mark's Poetry Project, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.

Anthologies

• Breaking the Cool: Interviewing and Reading Beat Women Writers, eds. Nancy M. Grace and Ronna C. Johnson, University of Mississippi Press, 2004.
• City Lights, ed. Maria Anita Stefanelli, ILA Oalma Press, Italy, 2004.
• All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2003.
• Women of the Beat Generation, foreword and contributor, Conari Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996.
• Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, ed. Paul Hoover, W.W. Norton, New York, 1994.
• Poems for the Millennium, vol. II: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry: From Postwar to Millennium, eds. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1998.
• The Portable Beat Reader, ed. Ann Charters, Viking Penguin Books, New York, 1992.
• Up Late : American Poetry Since 1970, ed. Andrei Codrescu, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1988.