Released January 31st, 2025 // 102 pages // 978-1-916938-74-8 // RRP: £12.99
The Mad Art of Doing Time is a raw and compelling exploration of life inside and outside the prison walls, woven with the complexities of mental illness and the often-overlooked human stories within the justice system. Through a blend of narrative and poetry, Scout Tzofiya Bolton offers an unflinching look at the harsh realities of incarceration, capturing the fragmented thoughts and emotions of a mind in turmoil. This book challenges perceptions and invites readers into the nuanced and deeply personal experiences of those living through the cracks in the system.
PRAISE for The Mad Art of Doing Time:
These poems, written during a stint in prison after a psychotic episode, show that anything is possible if we accept help, accept our addictions, and ask for forgiveness not both from those we have harmed but from ourselves. These astonishing poems are some of the most vital, unexpected, and raw poems I have ever read. They are bold, they are brilliant, and they are meticulously crafted. They are her career-defining work. Bold… brilliant… meticulously crafted. Astonishing. A touchstone of recovery literature. Career-defining.
— Max Wallis
Blimey. It’s hard to know where to start with The Mad Art of Doing Time. Bolton’s collection, which loosely narrativises time spent by the author in prison for a crime committed in a manic episode.
With such a dramatic byline, one may worry that the story could overshadow the writing itself. But Bolton manages to reconcile confessional and modernist traditions with sparkling ease. The bare-bones of craft are obvious, and give us an automatic trust in Bolton’s more ambitious linguistic pyrotechnics.
Her voice echoes through the collection, but do the voices of SCRAM (My Secure Remote Alcohol Monitor), the stories of women imprisoned alongside the writer, Oasis, Robert Browning, and more.
The Mad Art of Doing Time is a staggering collection. Bolton is adept at wordplay, but it goes beyond being merely playful (though there are moments of humour weaved seamlessly through the book): language is used to question, reflect, tease, move, and scandalise. Dark images jut from poems like stalagmites: such as ‘choices contorting like decomposing ballerinas’.
Bolton has pulled off something remarkable here. This is a staggering collection, with lines that reverberated in my mind long after I put it down.
— Sarah Fletcher
ABOUT Scout Tzofiya Bolton:
Scout Tzofiya Bolton is a poet, musician and broadcaster from the North of England. She likes to use her poetry as a lens through which to dismantle her mental health, her class, her Judaism and her understanding of the world as an unreliable narrator. Her works have been featured in both national and international media. Scout is currently working as a presenter on National Prison Radio.
