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.
Emery is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing, edited by David Morley and Philip Neilsen (CUP, 2012).
Emery's poetry is characterised by a dystopian vision of the world, the use of varied personae, an exuberant vocabulary, black humour and dramatic changes in register and tone.
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.
Working as Chris Hamilton-Emery, he is a Director of Salt Publishing an independent literary press based in Cromer, England.