In the period immediately before the First World War, he was one of the group of poets associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock, along with Rupert Brooke, Lascelles Abercrombie, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson and others.

[3] In 1927, the George H. Doran Company published Drinkwater's book Oliver Cromwell: A Character Study.

He did also compile anthologies and wrote literary criticism (e.g. Swinburne: an estimate (1913)), and later became manager of Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

A road in Leytonstone, formerly a 1960s council estate, is named after John Drinkwater, as is a small development of modern houses in Piddington.

Papers of John Drinkwater are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.