He co-founded New Writers' Press in Dublin in 1967 and was a founding editor of NWP's The Lace Curtain; A Magazine of Poetry and Criticism in 1968.
Early books include Sole Glum Trek (1967), Watches (1968), Pentahedron (1972) and The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine (1976). The last of these is a version of the Middle-Irish Buile Suibhne, well known from Seamus Heaney's translation in Sweeney Astray (1983).
After a near-total silence for twenty years, he resumed publishing in 1995 with stone floods, followed by Syzygy and Without Asylum (1998).
Joyce's poetry employs a wide range of forms and techniques, ranging from those of classical Chinese and traditional Irish to modern experimentalism. He has published notable versions from Chinese and from the middle-Irish.
A collected poems up to 2000, including his 'translations' was published as with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold (2001).
He is a Fulbright Scholar.