Ian Johnson (born 1961), known by his Dharma name Maitreyabandhu, is a British Buddhist writer and poet who lives and works at the London Buddhist Centre. He has written a number of books on Buddhism. His poetry has been published by Bloodaxe and  awarded the Keats-Shelley Prize and the Geoffrey Dearmer Award.

Life and work
Johnson was born in Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire. In the 1980s, he trained as a nurse at Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry then studied fine art at Goldsmiths College in London.

He has said he was an "habitual misery" who eventually found "something you might call happiness" after being introduced to meditation and Buddhism. He began attending classes at the London Buddhist Centre (LBC) in 1986, and moved into a residential community there in 1987, where he remains. He was ordained into The Triratna Buddhist Order in 1990, is now a senior teacher at the LBC and is the former director of Breathing Space, a well-being centre there.

Life With Full Attention: a Practical Course in Mindfulness (2009) is an eight-week course "steeped in ancient spiritual teachings, but aimed squarely at modern, secular readers, who are contending with complicated lives."

Reviewing The Crumb Road (2013) in The Guardian, Sean O'Brien wrote that "Maitreyabandhu is interesting for being one who notices, and for the care he brings to his observations of people, events, places and memories. But unlike Hardy and most other poets, he is inclined to be self-effacing, even when writing about himself." Also in The Guardian, Carol Rumens described "The Man" from The Crumb Road as "Typically, it's a poem which seems to present a reassuringly ordinary and familiar scenario, while slowly making the reader aware that something unusual is going on."

Reviewing Yarn (2015) in the Times Literary Supplement, Frank Lawton wrote: "Composed of four discrete but symbolically linked sections, Yarn embraces the spirit, if not the strict form, of Japanese renga poetry. [. . . ] The book displays an accomplished formal variety, taking in free verse, sonnets, blank verse, dramatic monologues and a series of rather less successful prose poems."

After Cézanne (2019) examines the life and work of the post-impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. A sequence of lyric poems by Maitreyabandhu "written in different voices to, about and "as" Cézanne", in chronological order, is interleaved with reproductions of Cezanne's paintings.

Publications

Books about Buddhism by Maitreyabandhu
Thicker than Blood (Friendship on the Buddhist Path) Cambridge: Windhorse, 2001. .
Life With Full Attention: a Practical Course in Mindfulness. Cambridge: Windhorse, 2009. .
The Journey and the Guide: a Practical Course in Enlightenment. Cambridge: Windhorse, 2015. .

Pamphlets of poetry by Maitreyabandhu
The Bond. Smith/Doorstop, 2011. .
Vita Brevis. Matlock: Templar Poetry, 2012. .

Books of poetry by Maitreyabandhu
The Crumb Road. Hexham, UK: Bloodaxe, 2013. .
Yarn. Hexham, UK: Bloodaxe, 2015. .
After Cézanne. Hexham, UK: Bloodaxe, 2019. . Poems by Maitreyabandhu and reproductions of paintings by Paul Cézanne. With an introduction by Christopher Lloyd.
A Cézanne Haibun. Sheffield: The Poetry Business, 2019. .

Books with contributions by Maitreyabandhu
Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1997. .

Awards and recognition
2009: Winner, Geoffrey Dearmer Award from the Poetry Society for "Visitation"
2009: Winner, Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry from the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, for "The Small Boy and the Mouse". A £3000 award.
2012: Shortlisted, Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets from the Michael Marks Charitable Trust and the British Library for The Bond
2013: The Crumb Road was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation

References

External links
"Putting Away Pictures", a poem from The Crumb Road
"The Man", a poem from The Crumb Road

English Buddhists
21st-century Buddhists
British gay writers
English LGBT writers
Date of birth missing (living people)
Writers from Warwickshire
Living people
1961 births