Dead Time: Poems from Prison

by John Rives, James Strecker (Editor)

John Rives was born in northern Ontario in 1958. He has two undergraduate degrees, in Geology and History, and is working on a Master's Degree in History. He has a number of poems published in Canadian periodicals since he was confined in Collins Bay Institute, where he is serving a life sentence. This collection is his first book of poetry.

"Dead Time" is jailhouse slang for wasted time, especially time spent in detention awaiting trial, since that time is not usually allowed to count against a sentence.

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[jo ianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am lucky to have come across this book discarded at a library sale table. Why someone would discard it is lost on me? A meditation into the cell of a prisoner and prison life that queries the phenomenology of time and body, the collection is remarkable in maintaining its individuality of experience whilst opening itself to philosophical inquiry that extends beyond prison bars into everyday life.