Focusing on criminological spatial analysis, this book explores the connection between urban neighborhoods and the patterns of incarceration and recidivism in the US and UK. It investigates why many prisoners originate from and return to specific areas after release, highlighting the social, economic, and cultural influences of these spaces. This resource is valuable for students and educators in criminology, human geography, and urban sociology, as well as professionals engaged in offender rehabilitation and resettlement.
Known for his bestselling memoirs and as an acclaimed poet, Nick Flynn in Stay
presents a self-portrait via a constellation of topics that the author has
circled-or have circled him-in his work: suicide, homelessness, addiction,
political engagement, artistic friendships.
Nick Flynn chronicles the surreal experience of being on set during the making of the film Being Flynn, from his best-selling memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, and watching the central events of his life reenacted: his father's long run of homelessness and his mother's suicide.
The narrative explores the lasting impact of a traumatic childhood event, as Nick Flynn revisits his past after becoming a father. Through lyrical bedtime stories, he confronts his memories, intertwining themes of loss and resilience. The character of Mister Mann embodies the darkness and vulnerability of Flynn's early experiences, illustrating how these elements shape his identity and parenting. This poignant reflection captures the complexities of familial bonds and the quest for understanding amidst a tumultuous upbringing.
Nick Flynn's latest collection showcases his ability to capture profound experiences with striking immediacy. His poetry reflects deep emotional resonance and explores themes of identity, memory, and the human condition. Through vivid imagery and poignant language, Flynn invites readers to engage with the complexities of life, making each poem a compelling journey into personal and universal truths.
Nick Flynn met his father when he was twenty-seven years old, working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this mystery father - self-proclaimed poet (and greatest American novelist since Mark Twain), descendant of the Romanov dynasty, alcoholic, and con-man doing time for bank robbery - but there had been no contact. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (a phrase Flynn senior uses to describe his life on the streets) tells the story of the eerie trajectory that led Nick and his father into that homeless shelter, onto those streets, and finally to each other. With a raw authenticity, telling honesty and a dark but necessary humour, Nick Flynn's memoir breathes new life and vigour into the form. In passionate and playful prose Another Bullshit Night in Suck City illuminates the emotional and physical consequences of a relationship between father and son that exists, if at all, in a void.
Set against the backdrop of a New York City blackout, four strangers confront their intertwined fates on a sidewalk. Gideon is locked out of his apartment, accompanied by the enigmatic Alice, a troubled teen named Esra, and a businessman, Ivan. As they navigate their disorienting situation, unexpected connections form, particularly between Ivan and Esra. The play explores themes of isolation and uncertainty, leaving the characters even more bewildered when the lights return, highlighting the complexities of human connection in moments of crisis.
Low explores the jaggedness of memory and what is salvageable when the past is broken by loss, violence, and trauma. Punctuating Nick Flynn’s signature lyric poems are prose pieces and sequences, veering toward essays, including “Notes on a Calendar Found in a Stranger’s Apartment,” a truly strange experience of cataloging a deceased neighbor’s belongings and how quickly they become worthless; “Notes on Thorns & Blood,” a study of time and wounds; and “Notes on a Year of Corona,” a loose sonnet crown about the early stages of the pandemic and the unrest after racist police violence. Despite its existential reverberations, Low is a celebration of desire in all its forms—the desire for home, the desire to be held, the desire for people to be kind to one another, the desire to understand where we are from and what we can do to make the best of that. But how do we create a home, these poems ask, in a world of satellites and atom bombs and algorithms, those things designed to dehumanize and reduce us? To get low is to reconnect with the earth, to engage with the emotional state of the planet, to remember that “the cure all along grows beside us.” Flynn’s collection is a prismatic, even prophetic, experience, with new complexity and ardor at every turn.
Al centro di questa favola autobiografica, priva di sentimentalismi, c'è l'incontro casuale tra Nick e suo padre Jonathan. Nick lo incrocia per la prima volta a 27 anni, mentre lavora come volontario in una casa-rifugio per senzatetto di Boston. Per anni da ragazzo aveva ricevuto lettere da questo estraneo, sedicente poeta abituato a tirare avanti miseramente con mille piccole truffe e tra un periodo di carcere e l'altro. Anche Nick ha condotto una vita semiprecaria tra un peschereccio cadente e le rovine di un deposito trasformatosi in un fiorente centro per l'uso di crack, e adesso si è ridotto a lavorare in un rifugio per senzatetto. Qui un giorno compare, barbone in mezzo ai barboni, Jonathan che ha perso un lavoro dopo l'altro, è sprofondato nell'alcolismo e si trascina per Boston all'interno di un universo tutto suo fatto di miseria e illusioni (i suoi presunti rapporti con Vonnegut e con Patricia Hearst; il suo misterioso Grande Romanzo Americano da finire). Questo memoir racconta con una voce unica, ironica, ritmata, la storia di due vite e del destino che le ha portate a intrecciarsi in modo del tutto inatteso in un centro di accoglienza per gli emarginati di Boston. Una storia molto forte e struggente di due uomini alla deriva negli Usa di oggi, uomini che si cercano, si trovano, si perdono.
