An innovator of poetry and performance, John Giorno's career spans fifty years and is intertwined with contemporaries like Andy Warhol, William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Whether written, performed, recorded, filmed or exhibited, Giorno's work – as a poet, and as a sexual, spiritual and political radical – is a shining jewel in the ongoing revolution of poetry and language in contemporary life. He helped pioneer the open exploration and celebration of queer sexuality in poetry in the 1960s, his anti-war work with Abbie Hoffmann resulted in Spiro Agnew labelling him one of the "Hanoi Hannahs" in the 1970s, and his AIDS Treatment Project, begun in 1984, set the bar for direct, compassionate action in the AIDS crisis.

Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems in 1965 to explore the use of technology in poetry, working with electronic and multi-media to create new kinds of sound and concrete poetry, poetry as installation and happening in venues including parks and rock venues, and poetry integrated into consumer products including cigarette packs, matchbooks, fortune cookies and chocolate bars. His Dial-A-Poem of 1968 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, made contemporary poetry available over the phone to millions of people. To date, Giorno Poetry Systems has released over fifty LPs and CDs of poets working with performance and music, numerous cassettes, videopaks, poetry videos, DVDs and films, books, silk-screen Poem Prints and Poem Paintings, amongst others.

Giorno is fabled for his high energy live performances, honed in performance with William S. Burroughs in the 1970s and 1980s, at rock, art and other venues around the world. His use of found materials, montage techniques and careful direct exploration of the nature of mind through meditation has produced the work contained herein: explosive experimental configurations of queer sex, spiritual practice and teaching, fused with fragments of everyday life. Giorno writes poetry from the gut. It is free verse that swings with intensity. if you like a snifter of realism in your poetry then this book is for you. Giorno writes with a hard nosed frankness that is both poignant and refreshing without being overbearing. Subduing Demons in America: The Selected Poems of John Giorno, 1962-2008 is a career spanning survey of his work.

Giorno was born in New York. He graduated from Columbia University in 1958. In 1962, while in his early 20s and working in New York as a stockbroker, he met Andy Warhol, who became an important influence for Giorno's developments on poetry, performance and recordings. He was the "star" of Andy Warhol's film Sleep. In 1968, Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems in order to connect poetry to new audiences, using innovative technology. This intuition turned out to be very influential on later approaches to poetry, like Spoken Word, Slam Poetry, and the use of technology as an aid for artistic purposes. He's collaborated with William Burroughs, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe. He is the author of ten books, including You Got to Burn to Shine, Cancer in my Left Ball, Grasping at Emptiness, Suicide Sutra, and has produced twenty-eight LPs, CDs and tape cassettes for Giorno Poetry Systems. He is the founder of the AIDS Treatment Project and instigated a famous mass communications exercise called Dial-A-Poem. A practicing Buddhist since the early 1970s when he met his teacher, the great Tibetan Buddhist master Dudjom Rinpoche, Giorno has been an important force in the development of Buddhism in North America, and in the ongoing conversation between Buddhist and poetic practice.