Chris Jones has lived in Sheffield since 1990. He was awarded an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry in 1996. From 1997 to 1999 he worked as a writer-in-residence at Nottingham Prison. He was the Literature Officer for Leicestershire for five years and then spent some time as a freelance writer and poetry festival organiser. He currently teaches creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University.
In March 2021 he published the poetry sequence Little Piece of Harm with Longbarrow Press. Little Piece of Harm is a narrative sequence that focuses on 24 hours in the life of a city that has been shut down in the aftermath of a shooting. As this act of violence ramifies outwards, the sequence explores the geographical reach of Sheffield – its urban settings and its rural landmarks – and eavesdrops on the city’s conversations.
In June 2015 he published his second full-length poetry collection Skin with Longbarrow Press.
In 2013 he published a chapbook with Shoestring Press entitled Jigs and Reels and his work featured in the Longbarrow Press anthology The Footing, publishing his sequence on Pre-Reformation wall art and its destruction ‘Death and the Gallant’.
His poem ‘Sentences’, published in the magazine Staple, was nominated for the Forward Prize Best Single Poem Prize 2011. The work appears in The Forward Book of Poetry 2011.
In 2007 he published his first full-length collection, The Safe House, with Shoestring Press. Here you can find his prison and River Don poems in full, along with pieces on family and travel.
A pamphlet collection of poems was produced with Longbarrow Press in November 2007. The sequence, entitled Miniatures, is concerned with the experiences of fatherhood, and reflections on wider family ties.
The first pamphlet he got published is still available from The Poetry Business. Hard on the Knuckle was a winner in the 2002 Book and Pamphlet competition run by Smith/Doorstop. The pamphlet features a sequence of poems about car journeys and his early prison poems.