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 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...

This collection of short prose, originally dating from the autumn of 1981, includes what is arguably the most literary piece John O'Loughlin has ever written - namely 'A Canine Crime', which deals with the problems of dog ownership in an age and society which has turned against such a thing, making it illegal. Also featured here is 'Nolan's Investigations', which opens the collection on a playfully erotic note, and the partly autobiographical title-piece 'Dream Compromise', which has a trick in its tail, so to speak.... As, incidentally, does the volume as a whole, in that it ends with a...

This substantial literary project, dating from 1982, is comprised of some sixteen short-prose pieces with subjects ranging from musical evolution to Christmas trees, Black Holes to Esperanto, and space travel to modern art. Of this number, the author's most outstanding work is undoubtedly the title piece, a fantasy projection into a millennial future in which we enter the mind of a 'superman' who is preparing to undergo an 'acid trip', view life in what is called the 'post-human millennium' from a spiritual leader's standpoint as he grapples with his counselling responsibilities vis-a-vis the...

Dating from 1984, this collection of forty-four poems continues in the free-verse style of 'Spiritual Intimations' (1983), albeit the verse is at all times prevented from degenerating into prose through the application of a methodological consistency which continues to favour the definite/indefinite article at the expense of lesser words. More significant of this collection is its greater concern with a general approach to metaphysics, including subatomic theories, which, though far from definitive, enabled John O'Loughlin to dig beneath the surface of his themes to what he hoped would be...