Michael R. Clark was born in Washington, D.C. in 1972, and grew up in suburban Maryland.  He has been writing poems since he was young, hammering out imitations of Shel Silverstein on his mother's manual Smith-Corona typewriter and posting them on the wall of his sixth grade classroom.  He took his first writing workshops in middle school, and has been learning in the workshop setting ever since.  He has taught writing to elementary school students, college upperclassmen, and senior citizens.  His work has appeared in journals like River Styx, Beloit Poetry Journal, Carolina Quarterly, and Poet Lore, and in many online publications.

He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland (1997), and a PhD in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi (2000).  He has taught in high school and at the university level since he took his doctorate. 

He was the first editor of the revived Little Patuxent Review, an arts journal in Columbia, Maryland, and edited the biannual issues of the magazine from 2006 until 2010.

In 2008, he and his wife Rebecca took their two young children to Singapore, where they both taught English at the Singapore American School.

In 2021, the family moved to the Czech Republic, where Michael took on the role of Middle and Upper School librarian and innovation teacher at the International School of Prague.

Aftet two years in Prague, the Clarks returned to Singapore and are again teaching English and Language Arts at Singapore American School.