John Adlam
John Adlam is a group psychotherapist and independent psychosocial researcher. read more…
A psychiatric hospital is not a factory
The technocrats
are taking over the asylums
with batteries of nostrums –
capitalising the castle,
parcelling up the parklands for gymnasiums
and luxury flats – whilom
mercenaries marching on to market
so long as they’ve skin
in the endgame. See how they come
in mischiefs, snouts
twitching, scurrying down rat runs
from cosy burrows in Twickenham
and Datchet, shrilling slogans
and batshit paeans to Taylorism,
sniffing for algorithms.
This poem was first published in Asylum Magazine.
Bolero (for Laura)
Be still, Bullfighter,
late is the hour
lay down your sword and muleta
muster your strength and your power.
It’s the tercio de muerte
there’s a desert moon on the rise
the Beast waits in his lair –
let him loom yet awhile.
Blue are the fires
in your castanet eyes!
Loose your cinnabar hair
smile your tumbleweed smile
and forgo this corrida
for the night waxes warm
and now we, your cuadrilla,
will keep you from harm.
This poem was first published in Atrium, 10 June 2025
John’s book with Christopher Scanlon – Psycho-social Explorations of Trauma, Exclusion and Violence: Un-housed minds and inhospitable environments – was published in 2022 (and reviewed by Dave Russell in Poetry Express Newsletter #69). https://www.routledge.com/Psycho-social-Explorations-of-Trauma-Exclusion-and-Violence-Un-housed/Scanlon-Adlam/p/book/9780367893316.
John lives in Brixton. He identifies as a boarding school survivor and has always battled with depression. He has loved poetry all his life but went through about twenty years of not being able to write a line (though he did write a lot of prose in those years). A chance introduction to Survivors’ Poetry events at The Poetry Society in Covent Garden turned out to be a lifeline and the Zoom meetings during pandemic came to feel like a homecoming to community. He is now a Trustee of Survivors’ Poetry.
John’s poems have been/are being published in places and spaces such as Iamb, After…, Full House Literary, Asylum, Snow lit rev, Atrium, South, Eunoia Review, Poetry Express Newsletter, and in several anthologies. Some of his past work, with brief commentaries to each poem, can be seen at