John Webber was born in Waterloo, London in the year that Elvis first entered the charts and the Suez crisis began. In the same year, Johnny Rotten, Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson and Jan Peter Balkenende, currently Prime Minister of the Netherlands, were also born, none of whom has yet had a book of poetry published.

He started writing poetry seriously in the nineties, and made his poetry magazine debut in Envoi. A number of poems have been subsequently published in this and other magazines and anthologies. His first collection, Private Histories, was published in 2004 by the UKA press, and he has also published the travelogue A Slow Boat to Moscow, the story of his travels in Russia.