Chris Armstrong has had three careers, working as a deck officer in the merchant navy and, briefly, as a farmhand on the farm in the mid-Wales mountains where he still lives, before a taking a degree and reinventing himself as an information scientist, working for the university and then for 30 years running his own research and consultancy company. On retiring he became a poet and writer. His early poems – of life, landscape, love and loss – were described as often communicating raw experiences with a degree of sureness, restraint and power. Having studied Anglo-Welsh Literature/Writing as a part of his degree at Aberystwyth, he prefers this term to describe his work rather than the more modern and slightly ambiguous term ‘Welsh writing in English’. His first collection of poems in print, Mostly Welsh was published in 2019 (Y Lolfa). More recent poems – many of which show additional influences from outside Wales – inevitably embrace a wider canvas than those in Mostly Welsh, and have begun to explore larger themes such as language and meaning, time, history and destiny. The poems’ language has been described as sharper. Frequent imagery is of the sea which formed him, and the horizon; he often references ‘Y Gorwel’ (Dewi Emrys).
Although initially entirely focussed on poetry, his writing has branched into short stories and his first full length work of autobiographical fiction, The Dark Trilogy was published at the end of September 2022, before a poetry chapbook, Book of the Spirit, in November 2022. His collection of short stories, When I Am Not Writing Poetry, and a further collection of poems, Lost Time, was published in early 2023. A new novel awaits publication. He has also published in magazines including Storgy, Agenda and London Grip New Poetry.
He gives readings and talks on writing and his work.
