‘Poetry Read in a Silly Voice’

Vic Blake was born in the London Borough of Fulham, just after the end of the Second World War. His family struggled with meagre resources and a whole catalogue of serious health problems while he spent much of his early life in hospital and special schools. At the age of twelve his family moved away from London to a healthier life in Hertfordshire where he left school, aged fifteen, with no recognisable qualifications.

After  holding down a series of unskilled/semi-skilled jobs, he joined the army, as he says, to escape from his impossibly difficult father, but he could not settle. Three years later, having left the army ‘prematurely’, he drifted for a while before enrolling at college as an adult student and eventually training and settling down as a teacher of sociology and of adolescents with emotional and behavioral issues. He completed his Masters’ degree in 1984 but, while doing background research for his PhD, he was hit by an oncoming car and seriously injured, leaving him partially disabled and in constant pain. He never completed his research.

A decade later, still affected by chronic pain and now losing his hearing, he took early retirement from teaching and re-trained in counselling and psychotherapy. Being a committed profeminist, he developed a keen interest in working with men and this was to open up a radical new direction in his life. Still affected by pain, however, he was forced eventually to retire from paid employment altogether. At this point he went to live in Galicia in Northern Spain where he began independently to research and write on men and masculinity issues. He returned to the UK three years later where he continued with his research, becoming an active member of several men’s groups as well as co-writing a book and a number of papers on the subject.

He now lives in Nottingham with his wife Maggie.