John Mogan was born in Toronto and raised at Paris in western Ontario. After high school, he studied English language and literature at the University of Toronto, where he took his BA (1951) and his MA (1957). He taught English at Etobicoke Collegiate in Toronto and entered medicine in 1957. He went into family practice from 1963 until 1969, when he was awarded a Harvard Fellowship in psychiatry. He practiced in Massachusetts until his retirement in 1993 and then took locum tenens positions in Maine and Arizona until he moved back to Canada in 2008. He resides now in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This work reflects his lifelong interest in poetry.