John Ash was born in Manchester in 1948 and read English at the University of Birmingham. He lived for a year in Cyprus, then in Manchester between 1970 and 1985, when he moved to New York. He stayed there for a decade, before moving to Istanbul in 1996, where he lived until his death in 2019. Ash published ten collections of poems: his last collection was In the Wake of the Day (2010). His poetry appeared in many publications including The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Village Voice, PN Review and The Paris Review. He also wrote two books about Turkey: A Byzantine Journey (1995) and Turkey: The Other Guide (2001).