Links to the files of which follow the remarks below:–
The essayistic introduction to this little collection of abstract poems attempts to point up a distinction between poetry and antipoetry and then to contrast both of these with what I have termed superpoems – the abstract poetry of a transcendental age or civilization which strives to dissolve grammatical appearances into a non-descriptive essence.Whether or not I was successful in this or even correct in my overall theorizing at this time (1983), Abstracts is a collection of poems which, whilst mostly readerly (or capable of being read), is devoid of conventional significance, and therefore has to be read or, rather, understood in relation to the underlying significance, where apparent, of the form, which lifts each poem above the usual phenomenal realm of descriptive poetry towards a transcendent realm of pure abstraction. – John O'Loughlin.
John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split partly due to his mother's Aldershot origins (her father, a Presbyterian from Donegal, had served in the British Army), he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who upon the premature death of her husband had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy marital absence from Athenry) in the mid-50s and, having had the benefit of private tuition from a Catholic priest, subsequently attended St. Joseph's and St. George's RC schools in Aldershot, Hants, and, with an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been sent to a children's home by his mother upon the death and repatriation of his ethnically-protective grandmother, he went on to attend first Barrow Hedges Primary School in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, and then Carshalton High School for Boys. Upon leaving the latter in pre-GCSE era 1970 with an assortment of CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCEs (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved to London and went on, via two short-lived jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford Square, where, with some prior experience himself of having sat and passed (with merit) an ABRSM Gd.4 piano exam, he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues throughout Britain and Ireland. After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he had enrolled to do English and History A Level, he returned to his former job in the West End but, due to a combination of personal factors, quit the Associated Board in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which, despite a brief spell as a computer and office-skills tutor at Hornsey YMCA in the late '80s and early '90s, he has steadfastly continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), An Interview Reviewed (1979), Secret Exchanges (1980), Deceptive Motives(1981), and False Pretemces (1982). Since the mid-80s John O'Loughlin has dedicated himself almost exclusively to philosophy, which he regards as his true literary vocation, and has penned numerous titles of a philosophical nature, including Devil and God (1985–6), Towards the Supernoumenon(1987), Elemental Spectra (1988–9), Philosophical Truth (1991–2) and, more recently, The Best of All Possible Worlds (2008), The Centre of Truth (2009), Insane but not Mad (2011) and Philosophic Flights of Poetic Fancy (2012).
