Hot Docs 2008

Norman Porter, a convicted double murderer, served 25 years in prison as an exemplary inmate, only to escape after being denied a commutation. For two decades Porter eluded police. The case went cold until a Google search led cops to Chicago, where Porter had reinvented himself as J.J. Jameson: churchgoer, handyman, published poet and member of the coffeehouse intelligentsia. Right after he was named Chicago's "poet of the month," the long arm of the law finally caught up with him. Killer Poet details the life of the mind despite the confines of prison. Porter's poems offer vivid proof that prison provides fertile ground for creative expression, if permitted, following the grand tradition of Robert E. Burns and Jean Genet. Porter is now back behind bars. Is this evidence of the U.S. justice system doing its job? Are prisons meant to serve as sites of punishment or rehabilitation?
-Angie Driscoll