William Considine was born in McKeesport. PA. His father was a fireman, with a sideline as a plumber. He first worked to assist his father in plumbing. He obtained higher education on scholarships and work-study. He graduated “With Great Distinction” from Stanford and cum laude from Harvard Law School. He was first encouraged to write poetry by Diane Middlebrook at Stanford and first formally studied writing poetry at Harvard with Elizabeth Bishop.
(Photo: Heath Antonio)
Bill was a member of the playwrights workshop of the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater, coordinated by Ed Bullins, with four staged readings there. He had play performances at Theater for the New City, La Mama, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Limbo Lounge, Ear Inn, ABC No Rio and Dixon Place.
He was active in the downtown NYC poetry world in the 1980’s and featured at numerous poetry venues. He also made poetry videos. His video of his long poem “Lincoln in Queens” won the Hometown USA Award from the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers in 1990, for excellence in video art produced on public access facilities.
He had a long hiatus from creative work, returning to it in 2011.
A chapbook of poems, Strange Coherence, was published in 2013 by The Operating System. A CD of poems with music, An Early Spring, was released by Fast Speaking Music in 2013. A volume of his produced, verse plays, The Furies, was published by The Operating System in 2017. A new chapbook of poems, The Other Myrtle, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. A new volume of poetry, Continent of Fire, was published by Kelsay Press in 2022.
His full-length, naturalistic play Moral Support had its premiere production at Medicine Show Theatre in February 2019, to critical praise. His full-length verse play Women’s Mysteries had a reading at Polaris North, NYC in June 2019.
His recent short verse plays include Aunt Peg and the Comptometer, Persephone’s Return, and Odyssey’s End, all presented in NYC in 2020, John Milton in the Tower, A Common Tongue, and My President’s Day Address for 2021, all presented in 2021, and Over Drinks and Oedipus in Love, both presented in 2023.
He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Polaris North theater artists cooperative, and Brevitas, a poets’ cooperative.
In his legal career, he served as a Lecturer in Law at Pace Law School, as an administrative law judge for the City of New York, and in three mayoral administrations as Special Counsel, General Counsel and Deputy Commissioner for a New York City agency. He subsequently served as an arbitrator and as Vice President for a public service corporation for dispute resolution.
As pro bono counsel for two community boards, he negotiated in 2000 the re-establishment of Canal Park, a two-thirds acre site in Manhattan that had been designed by Calvert Vaux and Samuel Parsons Jr. The park had been destroyed in construction of the Holland Tunnel and had remained a wide, paved roadway overlaying substantial utility conduits for almost 80 years. Re-designed and planted, Canal Park re-opened in 2005.
He retired as a lawyer in 2016 and lives with his wife in the New York city area and in Mexico. They have two grown daughters.