Links
to the files of which follow the brief introduction below:–
Drawn from several
previous volumes,
this collection of lyric poetry, comprised of rhymed poems and free
verse,
dates from the early 1970s and reveals the slow growth, out of a
conventionally
youthful romanticism, of a philosophical-cum-ideological approach to
poetry
which became characteristic of all my literary work in the 1980s, as
though
transitional to an uninhibitedly philosophical phase of writings to
come which
would leave even philosophical literature, including fiction, severely
in the
lurch.Therefore there is a sense in which
these poems strain towards philosophy as though towards my true destiny
in
writing, while yet retaining certain poetic values and tendencies which
I was
not, at that time, in a position to wholeheartedly reject from a
morally or
culturally superior vantage-point, as from the standpoint of one who
had ‘seen
through’ poetry and its ‘right’ to certain limitations.In retrospect, I find many of these poems
ideologically and intellectually specious or, at the very least,
suspect; but I
would not have got beyond this stage of my literary evolution without
having
gone through it in the first place, and some of them, I have to admit,
still
impress me with their boldness, imaginative flair, spiritual
insightfulness,
and sheer poetic insolence.They may not
be the wings upon which I have since grown accustomed to flying, but at
least
they enabled me to get off the ground and intimate of places and states
of
being which no purely mundane or overly romantic approach to poetry
would even
envisage, never mind set out for in the first place!In that respect, they are an integral part of
a steady climb to rarer and finer latitudes of the mind, and should
therefore
be read as a means to a higher end, rather than as a final statement on
any of
the subjects to which they purport to demonstrate some special
knowledge.Yes, I took poetry pretty
seriously in the
early 1970s and then again, after the best part of a decade, in the
early-to-mid 80s, but had that not been the case the results would not
have
been nearly so impressive or seemingly conclusive. – 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
he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy marital absence with her daughter upon the death of her Aldershot-based husband) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in
Aldershot, Hants and, upon the death and repatriation of his ethnically-protective grandmother and an enforced change of
denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into
care by his mother, Carshalton, Surrey. 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 to London and went on, via two short-lived
jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford
Square, where 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, he returned to his former job in the West End
but, due to a combination of factors, left the Associated Board in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer-cum-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), Sublimated
Relations(1981), Deceptive
Motives (1981), and False
Pretences (1982). Since the mid-80s John O'Loughlin has almost exclusively dedicated himself to
philosophy, which he regards as his true literary vocation, and has accordingly 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) 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).
