“Mugs”, “Rehabilitation”, and “Stitched Up”

Authors

  • Ian C Smith Independent.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/co20212943-46

Keywords:

Australian poetry, crime, punishment, victims, perpetrators.

Abstract

Smith’s poetry asks questions of crime and punishment from the victims’ and perpetrators’ perspectives. In “Mugs” an easy victim reflects on the burglar of his house. In “Rehabilitation” a former prisoner returns to his prison, converted into gentrified townhouses. In “Stitched” Up the boredom, inanity, banality, and a soft pain of prison life is exposed.

Author Biography

Ian C Smith, Independent.

Ian C. Smith was born in the UK and, after migrating to Australia, eventually settled in the Gippsland Lakes district of south-east Victoria. Smith overcame a period of criminal activity and subsequent imprisonment to see the value of word power, to educate himself and to write poetry and short stories. He wrote about these experiences in an article in Overland in 1997. His poetry has appeared in Cordite, Divan, Social Alternatives, New England Review, Other Voices (Canada), the perfect diary and Poetry New Zealand (www.austlit.edu.au).

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Published

2021-03-01