CV

1959/6 Served apprenticeship as a Mason with Orry Kneale & Co Ramsey Isle of Man. In the Island a five year apprenticeship is normal and training as a Mason means being qualified to work with all 'hard' materials on a building site from wall-tiling and drain-laying to bricklaying and plastering

1964/72 During this period I worked at many jobs including a period of about 2yrs where I ran my own building firm in Yorkshire. But I was also employed as a docker, a coal-truck driver, a taxi-driver, a stoker on a steamship, a farm-hand, a photographer and also as a deck-hand on a factory whaling ship. I also spent close to a year in Kibbutz Niram which was an orange farm close to the sea and 14 months in NY City where I worked cleaning taxis for Yellow Cabs

1978/94 Worked as a teacher of English, History, Sociology and Drama in various inner City Secondary Community Schols in Liverpool and Sefton and as an administrator/Education-Manager on the Vauxhall Neighbourhood Education Project

Currently; I have completed my PGCert in Counselling and Psychotherapy at Liverpool JMU and am working now as a psychotherapist at the National Health Trust Fazakerly Hospital. I also work at another Private practice in the City Centre. Problems dealt with include suicide attempts, trauma, bereavement, anorexia, abuse, breakdowns, Schizophrenia and drug/alcohol/personal problems

I am fastidiously conscientious and reliable. No matter what the task to hand I put all that I have into it. Whilst working as an adviser for the Citizen's Advice Bureau I dedicated myself totally to doing what is best for my clients and to developing Social Policy Issues. In January 2003 I passed my final exam to complete my CAB Certificate in Generalist Advice Work for all areas; Benefits, Debt, Employment, Housing, Immigration & Nationality, Family & Personal and Consumer Rights, becoming only the second person in the Bureaux to gain this National ward.

I am a poet and writer whose work is frequently published in poetry mags and Journals and which has also been aired on Radio including BBC Radio 4, Radio Merseyside and Radio Cumbria. I have also produced work for television the most noticable of which was Lesson With Mother for BBC2 and which was an examination of our Educational system. I both wrote and presented the 30 minute program which received excellent reviews.

I have 'guested' on numerous television programmes including; This Morning, The Time and the Place, Crime Stalker, GMTV, Six of the Best, and the only tv broadcast of The Moral Maze.

In 1986 I was asked by Tony Benn to give specialist evidence and advice to the parliamentary committee's enquiries into corporal punishment in schools which was chaired by Shirley Williams. This committee effectively abolished cp in schools in the United Kingdom.

In 2000 I produced, edited and contributed to an anthology of prose and poetry entitled Incite and in 2002 I had a book published under the pen name Chris O'Kalan called The A to Z of Education which has been widely and positively reviewed and is still available online. I continue to write and besides the numerous poems and short stories I have published in magazines my own work now features in the anthologies; Liver Bards, People's Poet 2003/4, See me Hear me, Crocodile Tears and my own complete anthology, Corrupted Memories, which was published mid 2003 and reprinted in 2004. Over 500 poems have also appeared in small-press journals in Vietnam, France, Ireland, USA, UK, Canada, Russia, Poland and India. In 2004 I also co-edited the best selling listening to the birth of crystals which is available via publishers in the UK and USA. My autobiographical 25,000 word poem Glimpses of Notes is due for publication and has already been nominated for the T S Eliot Prize... my first novel, Groups, was also published in 2006 with PublishAmerica and my chap-books Bum-Rap and through a glass darkly were published in 2007 by erbacce-press.

Late in 2003, from October 4th to 19th inclusive; my poetic work was exhibited as pictures and sound at the Peacock Gallery in Upton Country Park, Dorset, in an exhibition called The Word. Since then my work has been displayed as image-art in the Egg Cafe in Liverpool and Blades in Glasgow.

In 2004 I began to write reviews for many journals including Stride, The Journal, New Hope International, PoetryKit and Orbis. They have been described as ‘witty, ascorbic, intelligent and perceptive…’

I also establised in May 2004 my own radical Poetry Journal, erbacce, which is a quarterly poetry and poetics journal which I co-edit with Andrew Taylor, more recently Andrew and I together have been working to establish a co-operative publishing-house to produce other poetry compilations and chap-books.

In 2008 I began to co-edit another poetry journal Gloom Cupboard (with Richard Wink) and several more books of mine were published with Chipamunka including Bi-Polar Snapshots, (A literary commentary on mental-health) Glimpses of Notes, (autobiography) Alcoholics (A screen play) and Electric Memories (short stories). I also established the co-operative publishing-house erbacce-press with Andrew Taylor to publish collections of prose and poetry for new writers; four months into 2008 we have to date published close to 30 books... I continue to work as a psychotherapist in the NHS for between 12 and 20 hours per week on a voluntary basis.