He earned his PhD from SUNY Buffalo, studying with Robert Creeley and John C. Clarke. His first two full-length poetry collections were On Conesus (2005) and Topicalities (2008), both from FootHills Publishing, Kanona, NY. His 2011 poetic memoir, Road Ghosts, is available from theenk Books through http://www.spdbooks.org/ Albuquerque's Beatlick Press published an anthology of 120 poets called Mo' Joe (2014), inspired by his Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet (FootHills, 2012.) Mo’ Joe was a finalist in the 2014 Arizona/New Mexico Book Awards and was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize. Roche also edited the collection Uncensored Songs for Sam Abrams (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008), co-edited an anthology of poetry by inmates at Auburn Prison, and edited Martha Rittenhouse Treichler’s Black Mountain to Crooked Lake: Poems 1948-2010, with a Memoir of Black Mountain College (FootHills, 2010.)