Links to the files of
which follow the remarks below:–
Unlike my
first collection of abstract poems, simply called Abstracts (1983), this
later project, divided into five volumes with a total of more than 500 poems,
is non-readerly and hence abstract in a patterned and
completely formal way such that requires nothing more than contemplation, as
suggested by the title, of its monosyllabic structures.Thus all sixty-four of the upper-case
abstract poems in Volume Five (otherwise known as 'Ultracontemplations') are intended to assist one in developing a
contemplative frame-of-mind at the expense of readerly
norms, thereby transcending the intellect in what could be regarded as a mode
of literary salvation. – John O'Loughlin.
John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic
of Ireland,
of mixed 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 death of her husband had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy marital absence) 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 schools in
Aldershot, Hants, and, with an enforced change of
denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into 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 WC1, where he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues throughout Britain and Ireland for the Board's several examiners, which at that time included the estimable likes of Herbert Howells and Marcus Dods.
After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End
but, due to a combination of personal factors, quit working for the ABRSM in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer-cum-office-skills tutor at Hornsey Management Agency within the local 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), Sublimated
Relations(1981), and Deceptive
Motives (1981). 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).
