NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
An independent small press poetry review
 CHRIS JONES: HARD ON THE KNUCKLE Smith/Doorstop Books The Poetry Business Bank Street Arts 32-40 Bank Street Sheffield S1 2DS UK ISBN 1 902382 52 8 £3 visit the website of The Poetry Business visit the website of Chris Jones        Web design by  This page last updated: 28th June 2008. |
CHRIS JONES: HARD ON THE KNUCKLE | |
|
A neat little booklet consisting of two main sequences and a couple of concluding poems. COUNTRY BY CAR does what it says on the tin and takes us on a journey by way of a five-part sonnet (mainly) sequence — this from GALWAY: Leaving Galway we drove out west on roads like little twisters for the tongue, stalling at junctions where we had to guess, until, inevitably, I guessed wrong — stopped dead, in rain, at the end of Europe.HARD ON THE KNUCKLE derives from the author's time as writer-in-residence at Nottingham Prison from 1997 to 1999. The "prison diary" is becoming a sub-genre of its own. Ken Smith's excellent WORMWOOD and INSIDE TIME spring to mind as examples. In a series of sonnets, quatrains, couplets and octaves, Chris Jones looks at life inside from the perspective of both the prisoner and the outsider — this from NAME: From their windows men sing out numbers, names, hands to the grille light for the come-back call, but words get lost, change allegiance, and blame's out of their mouths, love's over the wall.Two unrelated poems, WORK and THE WASP TRAP finish off the collection. The whole is well-executed and augers well for the future — one to watch. | ||
| reviewer: John Francis Haines. |