Sirowitz was born on March 6, 1949, in Manhattan. He earned a degree from
Hofstra in education. He first began to attract attention at the
Nuyorican Poets Cafe where he was a frequent competitor in their Friday Night
Poetry Slam. He eventually made the 1993 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team, and competed in the 1993
National Poetry Slam (held that year in San Francisco) along with his Nuyorican teammates
Maggie Estep,
Tracie Morris, and
Regie Cabico. He would later perform his poetry on stages across the country, and on television programs such as MTV's
Spoken Word: Unplugged and PBS's
The United States of Poetry. He wrote eleven books of poetry, including the volumes
Mother Said,
My Therapist Said and
Father Said. He was the best-selling translated poet in
Norway, where
Mother Said has been adapted for the stage and turned into a series of animated cartoons. Sirowitz was a 1994 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and was the
Poet Laureate of
Queens. He worked as a
special education teacher in the
New York public school system for 23 years. He was married to the writer Mary Minter Krotzer. On October 17, 2025, Sirowitz died in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after a long battle with
Parkinson's disease. He was 76. ==Bibliography==