An award-winning joint volume of poetry, Sandy Jeffs invites the reader into the world of schizophrenia, while Deborah Staines evokes the mythic past and the technological future.

This powerful collection of poems intrigues readers of all ages, but has a strong resonance for teenagers. Young people are at a particular risk of mental illness, and are still developing their ideas about people and the world around them. Consequently this new edition includes an introduction by Sandy talking about the onset of her illness, and the possible links between schizophrenia and recreational drug use.

Poems from the Madhouse invites readers into the paradoxical world of insanity: the confusion and clarity, the courage and fear, the bleak despair and the black comedy. Only a poet could make us hear the thundering whisper of insanity, the endless circling of the revolving door, the sheer practicality of whatever gets you through the night. Here are portraits of other people in wards filled with restless wanderers. In the end, it is humour, a thesaurus of monickers that enable the reader to emerge sadder, wiser, but not hopeless.

"Jones writes brief, simple poems about isolated incidents while gracefully alluding to the complex relationships underlying them." --Publishers Weekly "Skillful, direct, and surprisingly delicate." --The Village Voice "A poet of uncommon perceptual gifts." --Library Journal Richard Jones's prodigious volume travels the wide arc of a lifetime in Proustian detail. He remembers a peripatetic upbringing, travels to London and Paris, separation from and reunion with his wife in the Italian countryside, morning tea with his daughter and trail runs with his sons, flights with a pioneering aviator father and conversations with a deaf mother. "Impossible task, staying alive," Jones writes, and yet a perspicacious examination of the life we have lived yields clarity andenrichment. Finding poetry in what went before,Stranger on Earth opens the door to what Proust calls "those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter." Richard Joneshas published eleven books of poetry and his poems have been featured on NPR's "All Things Considered." He is the founder and editor of Poetry East, and he teaches at DePaul University in Chicago, where he lives with his family.