John Drinkwater was born in Leytonstone on 1 June 1882, the son of a schoolteacher. When still a teenager, he began work as an insurance man, and it was while working in Birmingham that he became involved in the literary and theatrical worlds. By 1913 he was both a published poet and a manager of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In 1911 he married Kathleen Walpole, from whom he would later separate. He married once more, in 1924, to Daisy Kennedy.

Drinkwater was seen as one of the new wave of Georgians. Lyrical and Other Poems (1908) was published by Harold Monro, and, most significantly, he was included in Edward Marsh's Georgian Poetry anthology. His work likewise appeared in the Georgian journal Ne

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