John O'Loughlin's first real collection of poems, written on and off during 1973-75, reflects the lyricism and formal simplicity of youth, showing the influence of poets like Rimbaud, Ezra Pound, Adrian Henri, and The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison on his formative years as a writer of, at least initially, poetic tendency, which began pleasantly enough in Merstham, Surrey, before progressing first to Finsbury Park and then to Crouch End in north London, where he got the inspiration for the poem 'Dosshouse Blues', which should intrigue those who have personal experience of solitary life in cheap lodgings. Appended to the poetry proper are a group of prose poems, a series of aphoristic observations of a light-hearted nature, four one-act plays, or playlets (two of which are straightforward dialogues), together with a couple of short stories which he wrote at about the same time as the dialogues (1976), and which have a loosely poetic quality and deserve, for stylistic reasons, to be included, along with the playlets, in this little collection of disparate literary creations, which were among the very first things the author ever wrote and are certainly the only writings to have survived from the early 1970s, when he first began to regard himself as a writer. - A Centretruths editorial
About the Author: John James O'Loughlin was born in Salthill, Co. Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split while still a child, he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland with intent to stay) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot (Hampshire), and, following the death and repatriation of his grandmother, Carshalton Beeches (Surrey), where, despite an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother, he attended a state school. Graduating in 1970 with an assortment of CSE's (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCE's (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved the comparatively short distance up 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. After a brief flirtation with Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, where he had enrolled to study history, he returned to his former job in the West End but retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, and began to dedicate himself to writing, which, despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the late '80s and early '90s, he has continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), Thwarted Ambitions (1980), Sublimated Relations (1981), and Deceptive Motives (1982). From the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin dedicated himself exclusively to philosophy, his true literary vocation, and has penned more than sixty titles of a philosophical order, including Devil and God - The Omega Book (1985-6), Towards the Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental Spectra (1988-9), and Philosophical Truth (1991-2). John O'Loughlin lives in Crouch End, north London, England, UK, where he continues to regard himself as a kind of bohemian intellectual.