He is the author of the poetry chapbook
Cabinet d’Amateur (2005, with German translations by Ulrike Draesner and photographs by Claudio Moser) and the full-length collection
Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong (2015). Shields received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his translations of the poetry of
Jacques Réda. Shields’s numerous translations from the German include Michael Krüger’s novel
The Cello Player (2004), Dieter M. Gräf’s poetry collections
Tousled Beauty (2005) and
Tussi Research (2007), and Ilma Rakusa’s poetry collection
A Farewell to Everything (2005, co-translated with Andrew Winnard). Shields contributed translations to
Ice Memory: Selected Poems (2006), by Joachim Sartorius, and has also translated
Letters 1925–1975 (2004), the correspondence of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Since 1995, Shields has lived in Basel, Switzerland, and taught at the University of Basel. He also performs in the musical group Human Shields.