Born in Manchester, England, John Thompson (1938-1976) moved to the United States in 1960. For his PhD thesis, Thompson translated the poetry of the French surrealist René Char. He moved to New Brunswick in 1966 to teach English at Mount Allison University. Stilt Jack (1978) consists of thirty-eight ghazals and Thompson's working of the form has been a major influence on Canadian poetry. In 1991 Anansi Press published I Dream Myself Into Being: Collected Poems, and in 1995 Peter Sanger edited John Thompson: Collected Poems & Translations.