Chris Emery
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Chris Emery also known as Chris Hamilton-Emery (born in Manchester, England, on November 23, 1963 is a British poet and literary publisher.
[edit] Biography
Emery grew up in Manchester and went to a convent-run primary school in New Moston before attending grammar school in Prestwich. It was following this that he began to study sculpture, painting and printmaking. He continued at Manchester College of Art and Design before taking a degree at Leeds Polytechnic, graduating in the 1986. He subsequently destroyed all his art work, and began to focus upon his writing.
After a brief attempt to train as an art teacher, Emery began work in a variety of jobs: insurance clerk, an administrator in a haematology department, a data manager in an oncology department, an information designer in public transport, and design manager at the British Council, before embarking on a publishing career — ending up as a director at Cambridge University Press. He left to concentrate on writing and literary publishing in 2002.
Emery’s poetry began appearing in journals throughout the 1990s including The Age, Jacket, Magma, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, PN Review, Quid and The Rialto. He was anthologised in New Writing 8 in 1999. A pamphlet, The Cutting Room, was published by Barque in 2000. A first full-length poetry collection, Dr. Mephisto, was published by Arc in 2002. He has travelled to perform his work in the USA and Australia. A new collection of poetry, Radio Nostalgia, was published by Arc Publications in 2006.
Emery’s poetry is characterised by a dystopian vision of the world, the use of varied personae, an exhuberant vocabulary, black humour and dramatic changes in register and tone. His work can shift between mainstream poetics and wild experimentation, often combining both within a single volume. His central themes appear to be the incongruousness of moral experience within modern society, the collapse or eradication of identity, and non-spiritual or secular redemption.
He is also the author of a writers’ guide on publishing and marketing poetry, 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell.
Working as Chris Hamilton-Emery, he is Publishing Director of Salt Publishing an independent literary press based in Cambridge, England. He was awarded an American Book Award in 2006 for his services to American literature. Hamilton-Emery currently sits on the Board of the Independent Publishers Guild, and works extensively as a consultant in the publishing industry in the United Kingdom. He lives in Great Wilbraham with his wife and three children.
[edit] Bibliography
Poetry
- The Cutting Room (Barque Press, 2000)
- Dr. Mephisto (Arc Publications, 2002)
- Radio Nostalgia (Arc Publications, 2006)
Non-fiction
- 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell (Salt Publishing, 2006)
