Guest week: Poetry in prison
"...almost as common an activity in cells as eating and excreting."
Hello! Apologies for the pause there, while I took care of some seriously intense publishing projects. I’m now easing off for the summer and looking forward to writing some blogs. Today though, a short guest post from Valley Press poets John Killick and Ralph Dartford, about a subject close to their hearts (and mine). John addressed this subject in verse in his 2023 collection Inside; Ralph’s 2024 collection House Anthems, recently released in paperback, makes only brief mention, but they are both must-reads.
John Killick
I don’t suppose most people have ever given a thought as to whether those locked away for their own and society’s good have a need for self-expression. But the fact is that deprivation of liberty concentrates the mind wonderfully upon the essentials of existence. Thus, whereas outside the prison walls creative writing tends to occupy a fringe position in society, a kind of expensive gloss upon ‘the good life’, in captivity it tends to revert to its instinctual role of fulfilling a fundamental human craving. A man or woman enduring imprisonment is separated from family and friends and familiar environments and has plenty of time to review his or her position. The thoughts and feelings arise unbidden and demand release. The writing of poetry requires no more than a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. It is almost as common an activity in cells as eating and excreting.
A most unusual feature of most of the verse that exists ‘inside’ is that it is by Anon, and is circulated in an underground way, not just around an institution but throughout the system. The same poems (or variants of them) turn up in prisons from Albany to Barlinnie. We are almost witnessing here a throwback to an oral culture. There is the occasional inmate who is acknowledged by other inmates to have a special skill in formulating specific verses, and they can be overwhelmed by commissions and become quite rich from the rewards. Some poems are copied from books, so the prison library has an important part to play here. The predominant subject matter is that of love.
Many prisoners who acknowledge that they lack the talent to be a ‘real’ poet nevertheless fill exercise books with their own doggerel, or that of others. The general level of verse to be found in prisons is mediocre, which is hardly surprising since the level of literacy, particularly in male establishments, is well below that of a cross-section of the population outside.
It was in recognition of that fact that the Literature Officer of the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1991 set aside a budget to establish two Writers in Residence, one in a male prison and the other in a female prison. Ken Smith was appointed to Wormwood Scrubs in London, and I was given the post at New Hall in West Yorkshire. Ken had never worked in a prison before, and wrote an absorbing book, Inside Time, about the experience. I had been working as an education officer in three different prisons over the previous thirteen years, and the account of my adventures came in a poetic form in Inside, published by Valley in 2023. Both residencies appeared to be successful experiments and were renewed for a further year. Since then, many writers have had the opportunity to spend time in a variety of establishments, and a number of prose and verse books and pamphlets have appeared as a result of the tutoring that has occurred.
Much of the work is inevitably autobiographical, and reading it in bulk, as I did when I edited a national anthology of such writing some years later, it exhibited a certain monotony. Indeed at New Hall, where I spent a lot of time with Lifers, the pattern of their experience was so similar – all kinds of abuse as children, drugs and alcohol excess, crime to fund it, prostitution and abuse by pimps, whom they murdered – that when I put together a book of their stories it was so repetitive that no publisher would touch it.
The situation in prisons is now much worse than when I worked there: overcrowding, violence and drug abuse have taken their toll. So the need for those caught up in this spiralling melee to seek writing as a therapeutic outlet must be all the greater. One aspiring poet inside summed it up as follows:
Poetry is the heart of expression,
The true confession of mind-beat.
Ralph Dartford
‘My father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words.’ Arthur Scargill, The Sunday Times, 10th January 1982
Like John, I too teach creative writing in two prisons in Yorkshire in my role for the National Literacy Trust. It’s not glamorous work, but essential in so many ways. The levels of literacy in prison settings are understandably low. The men we work with are not unbright generally (the opposite in many cases), but victims of complex issues in their lives when growing up. To them, committing terrible mistakes has become a way of life, which has led to them having reduced routes to education and progress. What we try to achieve with these men in the creative writing sessions is to give them a sense of freedom, to release their imagination from the awful drudgery of their current existence. I take many authors and arts professionals into the classrooms with me; these may be children’s writers, theatre makers, rappers, podcast makers, poets and novelists. The sessions are planned to be enjoyable, exploratory and sometimes challenging.
At the beginning of undertaking my role, the work produced by prisoners mostly reflected their situations, their past and the lack of hope in their future. The prisoners did not technically write wonderful work, but they knew what they wanted to say. They loved reading the work of other authors though, and that came as a surprise. Prison is a place of nothing much more than stories, and the stories the prisoners hear result in an odd accumulation of enrichment and knowledge. Over time, the prisoners’ levels of literacy and communication have improved, and they have found a wonderful enjoyment for reading, writing and then talking about what they have discovered. Sometimes (and it’s a joy) we find a real talent in writing and communication, a prisoner who is an outstanding poet, storyteller, rapper or actor. When this happens, it tears us apart. What do we do with natural talent? We can’t favour one prisoner over another and open a literary industry door for them. That is unfair. All we can do is encourage, help them develop, and listen. Give them creative choices in what they are trying to say about themselves and the world.
It’s very rare for us to hear what happens to a prisoner after they are released. All we can do is hope for a positive outcome. Many of them make a quick return to the wings, and our classrooms. It’s a relentless, tragic cycle. However, we do know that some don’t come back, that they may have found something good in the work that we do and have used it, in their freedom, to seek better opportunities. That makes the pain, the sadness, beautifully worthwhile.