Curiosity held our first event in Hull Prison Library last week. Poet Matt Nicholson describes the experience.
I never imagined myself running a poetry workshop in a prison, but here I was, on a freezing cold March morning, meeting my fellow poet, Dean Wilson, and James the Prison Library Manager at the visitor’s entrance to HMP Hull.
I have to admit my heart was earning its keep as we made our way through the security systems, searches and all the processes that makes this enormous machine work as well as it can. After about 45 minutes and almost as many locked, unlocked, and locked again doors and gates, we found ourselves in the well-stocked, completely un-prison-like library. If it wasn’t for the subtle but reassuring presence of two Prison officers in the next-door office and the razor-wire visible through the library windows, I could have easily believed I was in a small village library anywhere in the UK.
We welcomed 6 inmates to our first Talking about Poetry workshop, with half of them admitting to reading and/or writing poetry and the rest interested to know what this poetry lark is all about. Once we’d established that our intention was to share a few poems with them and to hear some of their work, Dean started us off in his own inimitable way, with his poem about the dangers of standing on a deckchair, and the ice was broken.
I have to be honest and tell you that when James had told us that there would be attendees of mixed abilities and experience of poetry and creative writing, I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but a more interested and engaged bunch we couldn’t have wished for. It was clear that a couple of the attendees were talented and accomplished poets, but everyone entered into the conversations about what poetry is and isn’t, whether it needed to rhyme or not rhyme, have structure or simply flow out of us when the urge struck, and within the first hour, we were all convinced of the power that reading and writing poetry can give people.
In the second half of the session, after chocolate biscuits and some questionable coffee, I noticed that two of the lads had started writing while we talked and shared more poems, and it wasn’t long before both of them said that they had written a poem, one for the very first time, and asked if they could read them to the group. For me, this was the high point of a genuinely enjoyable morning, hearing someone who had never thought he could “do poetry” because he didn’t know what it was, or what the rules were or weren’t, suddenly reading out loud a poem he’d written for his mum and dad. I can’t wait to go back with Dean to do some more Talking about Poetry at HMP Hull. Thanks to Curiosity and the prison library for making it happen.