He began his career in the mid 1970s working alongside Bill Griffiths and Bob Cobbing at the Poetry Society printshop in London and with the Writers Forum group, who met with regularity on the premises in Earls Court.
Subsequently, cris collaborated on electronic music improvisations with Upton and ee Vonna-Michel as "bang crash wallop" and released several cassettes through Balsam Flex.
A large body of interdisciplinary performance writing was produced in collaboration with Kirsten Lavers under the author function Things Not Worth Keeping between 1999 and 2007.
[citation needed] Initially, cris helped Bill Griffiths and Bob Cobbing to produce in-house volumes of Poetry Review under the editorship of Eric Mottram.
cris later collaborated with Mary Prestidge, Kirstie Simson, Miranda Tufnell and Dennis Greenwood, Patricia Bardi, Michael Clark and Sue MacLennan between 1982 and 1986.
[citation needed] He went on to study "word + image" at Norwich School of Art & Design (1995-8) and earned a PhD in "Hybridising Writing: through performance and collaboration" from Lancaster University in 2004.
cheek also made contemporary vaudeville shows with folk musician Chris Foster that toured to village halls and community centers around England.