Charles Potts was born in Idaho Falls in 1943 and was raised on a ranch in Idaho. By 1963 he was already publishing poetry. He graduated from Idaho State University in 1965 with a degree in English.

Charles Potts founded Temple Bookstore, located literally in an old masonic temple in Walla Walla, Washington where he also sponsored and took part in organizing and producing Walla Walla Poetry Parties, which started in 1990. In addition to the Poetry Parties, the bookstore had regular poetry readings up to twice a week. Finally, the bookstore hosted the Temple School of Poetry. The Temple Bookstore closed in 2002.

Potts also founded a couple of publishing companies. Litmus Inc., he founded in Seattle and Berkeley in the 1960s. At first he only used Litmus Press to publish his Litmus Magazine, a small publication consisting of poetry, but before long he released 18 first edition publications of poets. One of these publications was the 1968 Bukowski collection Poems Written Before Jumping out of an 8-Story Window. In the late 1980s, Potts started Tsunami Inc. which is known for publishing The Temple, Gu Si, El Templo, a quarterly publishing poetry, often containing poetry translated from Chinese and Spanish. It ran until 2002. Like Litmus, this publishing corporation was too devoted to promoting poetry and publishing Potts’ books. Potts was also the president and founder of Palouse Management Inc., a real estate company where he worked as a broker.

Next, Potts is a Neuro-Science programmer as well, involved with the Chinese Computer Communication Inc. Between 1988 and 1994; he was the Northwest Representative of the Pinxxiee Corporation and the Chinese Computer Communications, Inc., companies producing word processing systems compatible with Chinese dialects. In the 1990s he also went to Japan in order to study the language and culture.

Finally, Charles Potts is most known for being an author. He has published numerous books containing compilations of his post-modern poetry as well as full length novels and even a screenplay.