Welcome to the LYRIC POETRY of
DOSSHOUSE BLUES
by John O'Loughlin of Centretruths Digital Media
Links
to the files of which follow the brief introduction below:–
My first real
collection of poems, written on and off during 1973–5, reflects the lyricism
and formal simplicity of youth, showing the influence of poets like Rimbaud,
Ezra Pound, Adrian Henri, and Doors lead singer Jim Morrison on my formative
years as a writer. - A modest but by no means insignificant start to my
literary vocation, which began pleasantly enough in the semi-rural environs of Merstham, Surrey before progressing, with this title, first to Finsbury Park
and then to Crouch End in north London (where I got the inspiration for the
title poem), Dosshouse Blues will
intrigue and even console those of a sensitive disposition who have personal
experience of solitary life in cheap urban lodgings. – John O'Loughlin.
All files Copyright © 2011, 2023 John O'Loughlin
Other related
websites by the author include:–
TEXT LINKS
Email: john-oloughlin@centretruths.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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, with the death of her Aldershot-based 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 put into
care by his mother upon the death and repatriation of
his grandmother, he went on to attend first Barrow Hedges Primary School in
Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, and then Carshalton High School for Boys, where he
ultimately became a sixth-form prefect. Upon leaving high school 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 up
to London and went on, via two short-lived jobs, one of which was at Ivor
Mairants Music Centre on Rathbone Place, 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 piano exam, he eventually became
responsible for booking examination venues. After a brief flirtation with A-level
English and History at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he was
then living, he returned to his former job in the West End but, due to a
combination of personal factors, not the least of which had to do with the
depressing consequences of an enforced return to north London, he left the
Associated Board in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which, despite
a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey YMCA in the late '80s and early
'90s, during which time he added some computer-related NVQs to his other qualifications, he has
steadfastly continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), Logan's Influence (1980), Sublimated
Relations (1981), and False
Pretences (1982). Since the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin has dedicated
himself almost exclusively to philosophy, which he regards as his true literary
vocation, and has penned several titles of a philosophical nature,
including Devil and God
(1985–6), Towards the
Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental
Spectra (1988–9), Philosophical
Truth (1991–2) Maximum Truth (1993), The Soul of Being (1998), Point Omega Point (2002), The Dialectics of Synthetic Attraction (2004), The Centre of Truth
(2009), Musings of a Superfluous Man
(2011) and, more recently, Atoms and Pseudo-Atoms (2014), The Black Notebooks (2015), and Black Sabbaticals (2015).
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