Squires was born in Derry and grew up in Donegal. He has lived in a number of countries, including a long spell in Persia in the 1970s. He now lives in Hull, where he teaches at the university.
His publications include Sixteen Poems (1969), Drowned Stones (1975), XXI Poems (1980), Landscapes & Silence and ''This'\' (both 1960).
Squires early work was influenced by the poetry and poetics of Charles Olson, but his more recent writings show the effect of his study of the phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.