Not Shut Up # 24

Issue 24 Spring 2014

ÂŁ3.50

Distributed free of charge to prisons and other secure establishments around the UK

not

shut

up

10 years of art & writing by the unfree

english Pen forgiveness Project Prisoners’ Penfriends radio wanno rePresenting Prisons, mental health facilities, detention centres and other secure settings

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Media PUPPets, stephen Peterson, acrylic

A decade of unfree arts

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long with other great art features, our 10th anniversary issue presents the work of Stephen Peterson. As is clear from our interview on page 25, introducing a gallery of his work, Stephen has interesting and unusual artistic gifts. He wants to describe his experience of the world, particularly his journey through the criminal justice system. Recently released, he faces the challenges of rehabilitation, but is alive to the daily examples of social injustice and political hypocrisy which confront us all.

Like other artists before him – William Hogarth in 18th century London, or Diego Riviera in 20th century Mexico – this is the stuff of his art.

Stephen’s current one-man show is the latest in an ongoing series of art exhibitions by prisoners and ex-prisoners at Garden Court Chambers in Holborn, London, organised by Freeflow Arts.

Garden Court Chambers has a remarkable record throughout its 40 year history of campaigning for and defending human rights and social justice. We take this opportunity to thank them, and in particular Director of Services Steffan Roberts, who has so generously supported the Freeflow Arts programme.

You can also read a review of the recent Freeflow Arts exhibition – acrylic paintings

by José Orozco – in this issue.

Matthew Meadows, art editor

Matthew Meadows Meet our Art Editor

I’ve been working in the criminal justice system for ten years, mostly in prisons.

After a stint as a Koestler judge, the Koestler Trust commissioned me to research and write Insider Art, a book about art in the UK’s criminal justice system, published in 2010. More recently, I’ve been organising oneperson exhibitions for prison artists – all part of finding wider audiences for the masses of locked-up talent – and unlocking it.

I work as an artist too, doing lots of drawing and printing strange political wallpaper…

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What is inside?

2 Introduction, Matthew Meadows, Art Editor 3 Art & Writing by the Unfree, Marek Kazmierski, Managing Editor 4 Interview with Gwyn Morgan, Chair of Prisoners’ Penfriends 6 Horse Latitudes, fiction by Chris Wilson 8 English Magic, exhibition by Jeremy Deller 10 Poetry Workout, by Anna Robinson, Poetry Editor 14 Killeen’s Reign, fiction by Adam Mac

Art and Writing by the Unfree As Not Shut Up enters its 10th year, we share this anniversary with a number of other great non-profit orgs – the Forgiveness Project, Prisoners’ Penfriends and Radio Wanno – all working to promote understanding and creativity behind all sorts of bars.

Started in 2003 as a magazine of creative writing from London prisons, Not Shut Up now represents all arts from all secure settings around the UK, and increasingly beyond. We not only publish quarterly as of 2014, distributing copies free of charge to around 300 establishments and care teams around the country, we have also set up a Not Shut Up Academy for ex-unfree writers and artists and are gearing up to help publish and promote their books.

If there is one word which comes to mind as we celebrate our tenth birthday, it is CONFIDENCE. Being a charitable, nonprofit arts organisation always involves uncertainty, especially now that so much arts and education is being withdrawn from excluded communities around the country.

But we want to inspire not just creativity, but confidence in creativity – so many of our artists never dreamt of being successful in what they do, because they started out not being told they can and then not trained how.

Ten years ago some writers in London prisons realised the writing being produced behind those bars was so good, it needed a magazine to showcase it.

Although none of them had run an arts charity before, Not Shut Up was born.

So, once you’ve read this anniversary issue, please put ink or paint to paper and send us your work – have confidence in the transforming power of the creative process!

Marek Kazmierski / Managing Editor

15 Celebrating Sci-Fi, a feature 16 Dieland, non-fiction by Dr Gary Jones 20 Being Creative about Being Creative,

by Marek Kazmierski, Managing Editor 21 Good Design is Everything,

by Phil Tristram, Creative Director 22 Poetry, English PEN Anthology 25 Interview with Stephen Peterson, Guest Artist 27 Not Shut Up Gallery 31 Prison Librarian 32 Celebrating travel writing, a feature 33 The Digital Age, by Piers Barber, Online Editor 34 Buried Treasure, fiction by Peter, HMP Wandsworth 38 Book reviews, English PEN Anthology 40 In My Imagination, fiction by Ralph Anderson 41 The Old Creepy House, flash fiction by HB 42 Poetry Pages 44 Freeflow Arts, exhibition by Jose Orozco 46 Forgiveness Project & Radio Wanno, 10th Anniversary Specials 48 Another side of Sylvia Pankhurst,

by Lucy Edkins 49 Call out for Koestler Awards 2014 50 Bluebird, Low Newton Reading Group feature 52 Art organisations worth knowing about 53 About Not Shut Up 54 Burnbake Trust, by Matthew Meadows, Art Editor Not Shut Up is a registered charity (Charity No. 1090610) and a company limited by guarantee (registered in London No. 4260355). Anyone interested in submitting work, volunteering or working as part of the Not Shut Up Academy, which works with in- and post- custody artists on developing their creative entrepreneurial skills, is invited to write in to us or contact us via our website.

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Interview: Gwyn Morgan

Founding Chair of Prisoners’ Penfriends Prisoners’ Penfriends makes it possible for volunteers to write safely to prisoners, giving friendship, hope – and a reminder of the outside world. They are now in their tenth year of operations. not shut up: How did you get involved in running Prisoners’ Penfriends?

Gwyn MoRGan: It all starts with the Prison Reform Trust (PRT), an organization which researches what goes on in prisons and campaigns for change. Back in the early 1990s, some of their supporters wanted to do something a little more hands-on for prisoners, and so they came up with a system of matching someone from the PRT and a specific prisoner, the two of them to write to each other, and used the PRT office as a forwarding address.

I was one of their volunteers and started writing to a prisoner about 20 years ago. I was matched up with Kevin who I wrote to, he was a lifer. I wrote to him throughout his time at Featherstone prison, and then in open conditions, and then he was released in Liverpool. And I heard from him earlier this year, so we are still Penfriends. The way I look at it, Prisoner’s Penfriends was born in 2003, when we became a separately registered charity. nsup: Are you going to reach full maturity or do you think writing letters is a dying art?

GM: I don’t think email need mean that letters are a dying art, you

can write a great email using the same skills. Sadly, some prisoners don’t join us because they think they can only handle modern technology. But many, after a slow start, really get into the swing of actual writing. We do actually send some letters into prison via Email a Prisoner. That does have a limitation – you can only write 2500 characters and that includes spaces. Some of our volunteers can write a very good piece of news, chat, a few jokes, in 2500

characters. That gets into prison quickly, although the prisoner then has to unfortunately still write back using snail mail. Having said that, when they are released and the prisoners and penfriends want to keep writing to each other, they can do that through the Penfriends’ email address. We are very relaxed about email and think that it can be just as good, from the point of view of exchange of letters as the old fashioned system.

nsup: A win-win situation! What is the secret of a good penfriend relationship?

GM: I think that it is very similar to the secret of a really good

friendship. If I think about the people who are my friends from school, I know two people, one from when I was eleven, one from when I was seven, and they are still my friends, and the qualities those two women have are the same qualities a good penfriend prisoner or volunteers have – first and foremost, they are loyal, and this stickability is the great quality of a pen-friend. And this goes both ways. If a volunteer has not heard back from a prisoner and just keeps writing those letters, in the end nearly always a letter will come back. And the other way, sometimes the volunteer won’t write although the prisoner keeps sending letters, and saying are you OK, how are you... that sort of resilience and loyalty reaps massive rewards in both friendships and penfriends. The second secret of success is that they don’t judge you and don’t compare your life to theirs. You don’t expect the penfriends to make moral aspersions about the prisoner, and the same you don’t expect the prisoner to be saying “Lucky old you, what a good easy life you are having outside.”

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Interview

NSUP: Is it easy to become a Penfriend? Do you have lots of

takers for the project?

GM: Yes, we have a waiting list, as we’re very fussy where we recruit. The Prison Service is very insistent we are careful about that, so we recruit among Quakers, church groups, and now increasingly because we have a waiting list we tend to recruit by word of mouth. So new people are the brothers or sisters or school friends of those we already have. When someone approaches us, we first ask them why they want to be a penfriend in the first place, and then we ask for references, which we follow up very carefully.

NSUP: That sounds like a lot of work...

GM: Well, certainly training is

another thing which we do, it’s huge fun, the volunteers seem to enjoy it very much. In fact, when we do follow up training they rush back because they enjoyed it so much the first time around. I train the Penfriends with Martin, who served a life sentence and is now on licence.

Martin is a superb teacher, he has certainly become my friend.

We travel around the country together, because we take the training to our volunteers rather than asking them to come to us.

NSUP: In terms of the question

NSUP: What do you think is going to happen next with letter writing in prisons?

GM: I would have thought it has to come that prisoners can email

out of prisons, my vision for the future is that people are offered the opportunity to join Penfriends on induction, and every officer knows about us and every probation officer recommends our service. We are unique in that we can follow the prisoner through their journey in the system. There is a very good book called “My invisible crying tree” by Christopher Morgan and Tom Shannon.

Christopher wrote to Tom through the original Penfriend scheme and they published their letters in this book, and the profits from that book go to support the Shannon Trust’s Toe By Toe scheme. And that charts an entire penfriendship between an old Etonian farmer and a prisoner who found they had something in common. And bore the most amazing fruit.

NSUP: Any letters which stand

out for you that you have read?

GM: I think that the letters which

of women and men writing in prison, what’s the difference in terms of gender?

GM: I think one of the biggest surprises, and there are many of these in what we do, is that women have been the slowest recruiters. I have gone to quite some lengths to remedy this situation, I even went and had dinner at HMP Send one night, and chatted with everybody. Very, very hard to get projects going in women’s prisons. I spoke at length to a prison officer who had been at Send and Downview, and he said that the women who would be likely candidates for pen-friends already have their own support networks, writing letters to their mums, their sisters, their friends, and of course they’re particularly concerned for the welfare of their children, so they’re writing to people who are already close to them.

are Hello, How are you? build and achieve something special in themselves. Letter writing isn’t going to turn a person into someone they’re not overnight, but it shows that somebody cares and that somebody can be loyal and this works both ways. It can show the volunteer that there is someone they would not have normally met, but that builds into something very valuable.

We have teachers and retired teachers, probation officers, those sorts of backgrounds. So they’re in the habit of looking out for people who are down on their luck. Often, actually, I think it starts with them thinking that they are the ones doing the looking after and then it turns out Wow, I didn’t realise they would look after me. That happens a lot. I think Britain is crammed full of the most open-minded, creative, tolerant people, that’s certainly my experience, and the long waiting list I have for being a Penfriend is certainly evidence of that.

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Non-fiction

ChrisWilson Horse Latitudes

Chris Wilson was born in 1961 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and grew up in Dar es Salaam, East Africa. He moved with his parents to California in 1971. After many years of living in the streets and prisons of the USA, he was extradited to the UK in 1998. Since becoming drug and crime free in 2001, he has studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, where he was awarded First with Distinction. His work has been shown in galleries in London and the South East of England.

He lives in London with his two dogs, and divides his working life between his job as a project worker with the homeless and various creative endeavours. Horse Latitudes is his first book, with two more written and waiting to see the light of day.

Extracts So I’m 10 and I’m perfect and I’m plucked from my reverie of lepers and mystery and dropped into the new land, Century City, Las Angeles County. It’s 1971 and we are in some shitty apartment with mummy doing our lessons while outside mobs of people wearing tear gas masks and burning flags roll down the pavement. I don’t know about Vietnam or politics or the fact that not all blacks are meant to be servants, I just know that I’m trapped in a bubble looking out and I can’t participate. I’m under house arrest and I don’t yet understand what crime I’ve been charged with.

Have you ever killed anyone? I don’t think I have, not on purpose anyway, but it’s been close. One day, you come up against some immovable force and it just happens that right now you’re all present and accounted for and your eyes burn into each other and everything goes silent like it’s holy hour and you know there’s no turning back and you’re scanning for spikes on the railings to impale his head on ‘cos you don’t have your crowbar and

his fists are pumping to the rhythm of his heart and people start to back away and you remember how clean it felt when you were about to hang yourself and you summon that moment and he can see, he can tell that someone’s going to die and for some reason he tries to laugh and offers you a cigarette which you take without speaking then he turns and walks slowly down the street back to the hostel where he gets drunk and picks up a fire extinguisher and crushes Drunk Tom the wet-brained Irish boy’s skull to a pulp then lies down on the pool room floor and goes to sleep. Each moment breeds a new universe we walk around blindly singing out future into being with every action we take or run from, isn’t that great? Relax, there’s no escape.

Let me explain.

So, I’m in solitary at the San Quentin psychiatric wing, I got a nice little cell to myself with a slot I can look through and see the ferries coming from San Fran to Sausalito. I can see the seagulls flying in the wind and watch the mud coming up from the floor of the bay in circles when the

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Non-fiction

tide is full. I’ve got my copy of Hemingway and a wired jaw and two broken ribs, I gotta shackle up backwards two times a week for my shower when I get to see my neighbours for a heartbeat, on the left some fat guy with long black hair and a beard is chained lying on a metal table inside a glass cell for maximum observation, he smiles as I’m led by. On the right is wolf boy who bangs his head and eats his own shit, they have to tear gas him and strap him to a pole by his wrists and feet like a stuck pig to take him for medical ‘cos he’s not complying, not one little bit, stay down wolf boy, so it’s OK in here like some bad dream where you’re not afraid but I’m hungry, in fact I’m starving and this liquid diet of pureed potatoes and water sucked through a straw is not hitting the spot and when the cops bring me chow they laugh and make slurping sounds ‘cos that’s what they hear coming out of my cell, my jaw is wired tight, sealed shut and I’m in that post kicking phase where you just gotta eat anything that’s not nailed down and I gotta get out of here and get some fucking chow. San Quentin is a medieval castle it’s a palaeolithic cave it’s old school and you know you’re in a fucking prison not some politically correct dorm with Nintendo and social workers. I’m just here waiting transportation to Norco again but I was so fucking dope sick I took a swan dive off the third tier to get some relief

Images courtesy of www.sorika.com

and they don’t believe me, they think I’ve been pushed and there’s some little gang affiliation drama to be had but I’m not in any gang, I’m solo and always have been.

Enough already. Fuck another prison book, I mean I love Chopper and Papillon and Dostoyevsky and Moments of Reprieve

by Primo Levi, I know solitary confinement is a wonderful place to breathe in and the

thrill it is to be paraded through public in a full set of shackles and an armed escort, I can even get carried away and wax lyrical about the strange silence that ensues after the blue light above north block on San Quentin goes out and you know they just executed some mongrel and tomorrow we’ll be off lockdown after three days in our cells or the dumb look of pride on the cons’ faces as they scream dead man walking and you’re supposed to stop cold and face the wall walking as they escort Richard Ramirez “The Night Stalker” to the law library, he’s got on mirrored shades and looks like a rock star surrounded by groupies. Yes, we’re all stupid cunts. In prison, you eat, shit and piss like you do in your penthouse, you breathe, you wank, you tell lies and your nightmares are the same ones you had as a child, the images change but the sins remain the same, the only difference is in prison you don’t have to do anything about it, you are back in the womb, you are safe from the horrors of facing up to your own ineptness and confusion, everything’s simplified. For me it was easier to be stabbed than to get a job or pay the rent. I didn’t realise that my perceived weakness was really my strength, an absolute refusal to do anything that did not please me, but when that pleasing takes the form of destruction and rage it gets complicated.

Horse Latitudes, review by Richard English Horse Latitudes portrays Chris Wilson’s descent into drug use, criminality, prostitution and prison. For the most part, the narratorial setting is the Mission district in San Francisco with flashbacks to Los Angeles, Dar Es Salaam and other places pertinent to his past. Chris’s narcotic Odyssey is hard hitting, brain splitting and bowel moving. At least those are some of the effects that it had on me. He depicts a wasteland of heroin horror through a combination of drugalogue and gobsmacking anecdotes about murder, prostitution, the extreme characters that inhabit the Mission, and his experiences of incarceration that extend from county jail to the San Quentin psychiatric isolation ward.

Instead of prison being an evil, it is a good, a locus of overcoming that transforms Chris into an Ubermensch. The result is a postapocalyptic and human, far too human, being. Whereas the typical

addict memoir describes in sensationalist detail the violence of sociopathic guards, rapes in the shower, and blades in the gut when queueing for lunch, Chris writes that prison gives him a chance to detoxify both physically and spiritually. He achieves bodily recovery as well as acquiring a sense of his own presence. A new reality creeps in. “I realized I’d got qualities I wasn’t aware of before... Now I knew how to provide for myself.”

Horse Latitudes adumbrates with compassion the process by which an individual, who is taken away from the ordinary world, but not destroyed by this removal, can acquire the gift of seeing the ordinary world from a special and lucid perspective on his return. The result is a leap from the wasteland to the desire for, and achievement of, grace and integrity.

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Art

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ccompanied by support staff from the Koestler Trust, each of the ex-offenders is training for a career in the arts, having previously been a winner in the annual Koestler Awards. The British Council organised a programme of educational tours of the Biennale pavilions and Venetian galleries.

On returning to the UK, each participant was given a one-to-one advice session about future options in art education or employment. They also produced an artistic response to the Biennale and wrote a blog about their experiences.

Andrea Rose, Director of Visual Arts at the British Council, said: “Bringing ex-offenders to Venice, to work with us at the British Pavilion, makes real the theme of social justice that runs through Jeremy Deller’s exhibition. We are delighted that our partnership with the Koestler Trust enables us to take this bold and innovative step.”

Eve McDougall was one of the Koestler artists who travelled to Italy to visit the exhibition. Eve is an author, self-taught artist, singer song-writer and also a tutor in art, creative writing and poetry. She works as public speaker and a consultant in criminal justice. Here is her description of how the trip to Italy and the exhibition looked through her eyes.

SUPER NOVA EXPLOSION Unique Venezia a beautiful, amazing city, basking on the sea, the boats, buses and taxis too! The daily life of doing everything by boat, delivery supplies to local restaurants, hotels, cafés shops, art galleries and nice

Jeremy Deller

English Magic

The British Council and the Koestler Trust took ex-offenders to the Venice Biennale last year. A new partnership between the British Council and the Koestler Trust enabled eight ex-offenders to travel to the 55th International Art Exhibition as part of an education initiative. to have no raging traffic roaring round the streets.

The architecture of the old town blew my mind – the colours, the smells of sea salt, the food and the people, and of course the torrential heat.

The Biennale and Jeremy Deller’s English Magic exhibition were a revelation, an emotional, soul-digging journey of imagining future events and past history of icons and truth. The British Pavilion was magical.

I really think it stands out and is a fine piece of architecture, love the space and the solid feeling I got when looking round not forgetting the two yew trees that greet you before you go up the main stairs.

Meeting Jeremy was very inspiring and positive, his exhibition is totally spot on.

Provocative powerful and empowering. I could identify with his thoughts and feelings on justice and social policy and the future. I thank him for taking us from room to room and talking through the exhibits.

My heart bleeds for the ex-soldiers who are incarcerated, the soldiers our government trained to kill in defending them and us.

Working with Jeremy Deller “As part of my exhibition for Venice I would like to work with art from prisons again, to make a series of drawings for one room of the pavilion. I would like to exhibit artwork by former soldiers who are currently in prison. I’m interested in exhibiting drawings of their experiences in the armed forces, combined with a series of images taken from photographs of political events that had a bearing on their careers, most notably the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Jeremy Deller

Incarcerated with all sorts of traumatic mental health issues, which leaves me thinking WHO’S WHO! I really appreciated their drawings and words, they hit you right in the guts very emotional. The wee film was a magical vision of truth and honesty – a must see. I would like to thank Jeremy also the staff for the really nicely prepared lunch, not forgetting the TEA, “The Endless Appreciation”. Jeremy took time to speak to each and everyone of us, he is a real down to earth guy who cares for the people and the Mother earth, I TAKE MY HAT OFF TO HIM. I was very inspired after meeting Jeremy and seeing his exhibition. I have been drawing and painting since I wrote a wee play, all those years ago. For me it was the trip of a lifetime to spend three days looking at the world’s artists in the beautiful unique Venezia, an uplifting experience which has got me thinking. I would like to thank the British Council for giving me this amazing opportunity and also the Koestler Trust.

Ai Wei’s exhibition was one that struck me very, very powerful. I could identify with that and later that night I cried. I wasn’t sad, I knew I wasn’t alone anymore. Sad that he wasn’t allowed to go and see it. The whole experience of the Biennale, Arsenale and Venice will inspire me for years to come.

Eve McDougall 2014

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Eve McDougall was one of the Koestler artists who travelled to Italy to visit the exhibition. Eve is an author, self-taught artist, singer song-writer and also a tutor in art, creative writing and poetry. She works as public speaker and a consultant in criminal justice.

Artist Jeremy Deller is an English conceptual, video and installation artist. He won the Turner Prize in 2004. Deller is known for his Battle of Orgreave, a reenactment of the actual Battle of Orgreave which occurred during the UK miners’ strike in 1984.

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Anna Robinson’s

Photo by brittany aPP

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Poetry Workout

o - it’s been 10 years we’ve been producing this magazine. 10 years of reading, puzzling over, thinking about and choosing your poems. I know the poems I’ve liked best, poems that have surprised and delighted me with their new ways of saying something important.

There are poems that I thought had really good parts to them fresh and energetic lines. There were lots more that I thought were okay! Decent beginner poems that I wanted to share with you - to encourage the writers and get you all to ‘have a go’.

And then there’s.... the others!

There is a line that seems to wander into some prison poems without any sense of shame. The poems with it in seem to hang around that line like they think the reader will never have seen anything so stunningly original before! But, sadly, she has! The line goes something like this - My lonely cell is a concrete hell! And, yes, I know it is! But, because every postbag for every one of those 10 years has had a concrete hell poem in it, it neither surprises or moves me.

This issue of Not Shut Up though is about celebrating those 10 years and so I am going to invite you to write me a concrete hell poem! Concrete hell (as in cell) could be said to be cockney rhyming slang - it could also be a Kenning. Kennings were Viking and Anglo Saxon poetic phrases that featured in poetry and sagas.

They were like mini riddles.

They consisted of two words - a base word and a determinant.

The base word is the word that is standing in for what is being discussed - so ‘hell’ is the base word in our concrete hell example.

The determinant is the word that gives us the further information to tell us what our riddle means. So - it is a hell made of concrete = a cell.

Viking poets usually wrote about their sea journeys - common kennings for the sea were ‘bed for fish’, ‘whale house’, ‘island ring’, ‘frothing beer of the coastline’. One good example of a kenning we use in modern speech is ‘sky scraper’ for tall building. There

is no real mention of the building there - it is just something that scrapes the sky - and we all understand it.

However, don’t be afraid of the reader not understanding what you are saying. Vikings didn’t worry about things like that. That kind of concern is very modern. Try to make your concrete hell poem a bit of a puzzle and give the reader some work to do.

Starting with ‘concrete hell’ think of other kennings for cells; these are your raw materials for the poem. Some Icelandic Viking poems were just a list of kennings for the same thing - you could write one like that.

In my concrete hell, my womb of the rat queen, my stone body bag, etc. etc.

Viking poems tended to be long sagas that contained within them short poems called Lausavisa. These had 8 lines. Each line has six syllables. In the first and all subsequent odd numbered lines there are 2 or 3 alliterative syllables (words that have the same letter in them - ‘all those lovely Ls’). The even numbered lines had a first word that alliterated with the previous lines alliterations.

All those lovely Ls Lord - what words If you think that sounds complicated - there were more rules as well. But, I think that’s enough of a challenge - even for our 10th birthday. So - create some kennings, write 8 lines of 6 syllables and try to get alliterative! If you can’t - or don’t fancy doing all that just write a poem of any shape using kennings that begin with the idea of ‘concrete hell’.

Happy Writing!

Anna Robinson, Poetry Editor

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The Power of Ten Ten are here, ten apples on the tree a midwife and a bottle of gin.

The tenth is the world of speech.

You can’t help overhearing.

Ten are here, ten emerald tongues and you, the talk of the bathhouse.

I shall not covet my neighbour’s shoes, her tattoos, her castanets.

Ten are here, ten purple flames.

We were not born yesterday.

The tenth is the world of speech I tell you, so help me god.

I shall not covet my neighbour’s trims, her shed roof, her satin sheets.

Ten are here, ten apples on the tree a white wreath and a feathered plume.

I shall not covet my neighbour’s death her brandy or her extra room.

This is a poem I wrote to celebrate the idea of 10. It combines the idea and rhythm of a counting game like 10 green bottles, with a numerological idea of 10 representing communication - I have turned this into gossipy communication - with all that is both good and bad about that.

Anna Robinson, Poetry Editor

Anna Robinson

Meet our Poetry Editor After 8 years as HMP Brixton’s librarian, I set up Not Shut Up with 2 colleagues so that we could produce the kind of magazine we wanted to. As well as editing the poetry pages and judging the poetry section of the Koestler Awards, I write poetry and teach at the University of East London. My second poetry collection Into The Woods will be published

by Enitharmon this summer

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Lost and Found

Walk on, through fog like glue, head down beads on my brow, a mind full of feat shake my head, aspiring for good my curtain call, passions to reveal rising now, embers still smoulder meercat curious, but stag cautious hostile territory, a world unknown, then a breeze through the chestnuts, view the horizon.

Voices in my head, whispering my name suspicious eyes, frosty, cynical, watch centurions with keys, baring my way.

There will be no pursuit today.

Spy through my eyes, calculated calm, watch your back no rise to this hook, for the may fly has passed.

Their unintelligible expression, mouths all slack a ripple in hell, you will never see Now reacquaint with that man, I once knew grow tall once more, strong and unbowed sunrise of gold in September’s dawn and as cold, hard gates swing, I breathe once again.

John N Smith, HMP Kirkham

Voices

Head full of talk thoughts hazy, paranoia manifest and I go crazy, cussing peeps and no-one’s there, mind a bungee, ready to tear.

I grab hold, grip some normality, voices in my head equate insanity, pushes choices rather left alone: excuse as I scream like ten megaphones!

I stop, see all eyes on me, let loose tongue, betrays loudly, words so profound they near drown me, but at times, king and crown me.

When talk makes a skewed kind of sense engaging, amazing, like rap star Fifty Pence, when traps are set and dangers roll a script already told unfolds.

No holds barred when they speak profanities no sane being repeats.

Uninvited squatters there from young now if silent, I feel something’s wrong.

Always shied from giving them names painful life with mad mental games.

Syllables now always a background like a TVs on forever, the sound!

Maybe there’s a hex from birth that binds me, with so much talk there’s no sleeping soundly.

I tried getting close, so not alone from others, disillusionment, despair, my soul discovers; afraid those close become ever distant, I can’t stop voices that talk any instant.

Trembling in fear, believing danger is near, friends disappear as I shed a tear.

Even prayers interrupted, no place of peace.

RIP those who find release.

Jason Smith, HMP Hewell

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Untitled

Smoking roll-ups, drinking tea, middle age pot belly, watching TV, not much on except repeats, trying all channels on plastic seats.

There are soaps, the nation’s addiction, but alas not one of my afflictions.

Belly rumbles, dinner was spare, breakfast pack, hear plastic tear.

Cell-mate snoring a diazepam slumber, lets off a fart like rumbling thunder.

The window allows only a trickle of air, being already bald, I can’t pull out my hair.

Condensated windows, methane gas, I imagine a plug and my cell-mates arse.

Beset by my demons, I think of my time and pray for a single in the next prison in line!

J Smith, HMP Featherstone

Who I Once Was

Boom, Boom, of the African bongo drums Deep within my chest Gripping tight the leather wheel Wishing I was flying instead Driving closer to the jaws of the boat Guards suspicious with fleeting eyes Looking deep into my very soul They know every deep dark secret I hold Dreams, success and money spent, all forgotten Claustrophobic rooms, cold empty, damp come to mind Walls caving in, breath escaping, oxygen lost Turn around, run, escape, leave, what am I doing?

Smile, hide the fear, stay calm, you’re on that beach Outside a calm sea, inside a whirling tornado Drive, drive, softly, softly, success, happiness The jaws accept me, panic over, I’m fearless once again M. Ashraf, HMP Kirkham

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Fiction

Reaching out by José Orosco

Killeen’s Reign by Adam Mac

H

e watched the sky intently, eyes fixed on endless darkness, and then, just as he had expected, Killeen’s lightning began to strike once more, revealing the manta rays that flew through the sky. They dipped and weaved, gliding between the jagged bolts of electric blue light. The world had changed a lot since Jacob had been reborn. He had expected much of it, he’d even foreseen some of it, but as he stood on the beach, digging his bare toes into the wet sand, he knew that something had gone horribly wrong.

Instantly, the rolling clouds above were joined with the thunderous waves below by uncountable strings of otherworld electricity. The bridge flashed into vision. When it had first been built, the ground folk had believed it to be nothing more than a pier. They had never known its higher purpose.

Walking along the shore, Jacob watched as the iron legs of the bridge grew closer, revealing the rusty entrances to the hidden homes of the Trolls of Shadow. Tales of these dark souls had even crept into mortal folk lore, but, for centuries, they had remained hidden, even from those with the gift of fire-sight.

He trudged to the top of the beach and onto the pier, then turned to look far down the bridge’s length. He looked past the huts of the watchmen who posed as candy floss salesmen in rotting wooden

kiosks, past the palace of the golden prince who masqueraded as the mere manager of an amusement arcade, and right into the dark abyss itself. And then he knew. He would never be able to return.

As he stepped forward, the waves grew fierce and began to hit at the bridge with such ferocity that they rode right over him, leaving him dripping with the cold tears of the ocean. The sea was giving all she could to turn him back, but he could not relent. He pressed on, striding forward towards the darkness. With every step, the bridge grew two strides longer until, nearer to the horizon than to the land itself, Jacob could see nothing around him but bridge and sea. Yet still he continued.

It was three days and eight nights’ walk to the land of Killeen.

By the time the bridge’s end came into view, it was clear that Jacob had come too late. Instead of a kingdom of green rolling hills, trees of golden leaves and rivers that ran with sparkling cerulean sapphires, he found a dark and wounded land. The trees were burnt and broken, the rivers dried up or set ablaze, and even the ground itself scorched black, dry and lifeless.

Jacob paused for a moment, inhaling the ash-filled air and breathing out his white rage. And then, throwing off his torn and sodden rags, he stepped off the bridge and marched forward into the darkness. The final day of Killeen’s reign had already begun.

Killeen’s Reign – an analysis Adam Mac’s story opens with an image of “manta rays flying through the sky” – strange, mesmerising, sets the scene wonderfully.

Jacob, our hero, had been “reborn” – again, simple words, but how they capture the reader’s imagination! “The bridge flashed into vision” - a great example of showing, not telling. “Trolls of Shadow... watchmen... golden prince” – characters which both set up

a conventional fantasy narrative, yet hiding beneath a pier, masquerading as amusement arcade employees, they signify that the author is going to do something fresh with the material.

Crossing the bridge, we know the sea has some kind of conscious power, and is attacking our hero, and yet he strides on, perhaps because he is strong, perhaps

because that is what a hero has to do, or perhaps simply because he has nothing to go back to.

When the bridge finally ends and a terrible picture emerges, we already know Jacob has triumphed over the desolate sea and the malicious bridge and look forward to his encounter with Killeen – a battle which should be both epic and very human.

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Science Fiction

a miSunderStood art?

I wonder, is the story you have just read on page 14 science fiction? Is it fantasy? Or is it a metaphorical exploration of the struggles a prisoner has to go through when released from captivity? Let’s start with the first question – what is sci-fi and does the story qualify as such?

It seems science fiction writing is much misunderstood, and so treated more like children’s literature than grown up writing. When we think of sci-fi, we think laser battles and cute aliens and monster robots. But the best sci-fi writing is the best kind of writing full stop – visions of our own future, imaginations working without limits, the most profound stories set in the furthest reaches of space.

10 Sci-fi books which will change and then blow your mind A Journey to the Centre of the eArth, by Jules Verne – a wellknown classic which launched the sci-fi genre.

BrAve new world, by Aldous Huxley - set in 2540, this novel reimagines all of what we think is real. So good, it has shaped a lot of modern culture. nineteen eighty-four, by George Orwell – set in... well, you guess, this dark vision of what was once the future coined the term Big Brother. Well worth reading as a warning to us all. dune, by Frank Herbert – made into a film and a TV series, this is a complex but amazingly satisfying saga. The best selling sci-fi book of all time! foundAtion, by Isaac Asimov – a great plot and a magical book, which has to be read to be experienced and understood.

SolAriS, by Stanislaw Lem – a mind-twisting psychological adventure about a planet which has a mind of its own. A novel about miscommunication. do AndroidS dreAm of eleCtriC Sheep? by Philip K. Dick – you will know this story from the classic film Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford reinvents Han Solo for a much darker age.

2001: A SpACe odySSey, by Arthur C. Clarke – charting the beginning and the ending of human culture and consciousness, it still includes fab spaceships and deep space drama! the hitChhiker’S guide to the gAlAxy, by Douglas Adams – let’s not forget this innovative and much-loved dose of space comedy. It even explains the meaning of life!

the SirenS of titAn, by Kurt Vonnegut – both mature and weird, a novel set amid a Martian invasion of Earth.

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Dieland life writing by Dr Gary Jones

Gary spent more than nine years in Bang Kwang prison in Thailand, hence the title of this piece. He has now been transferred to serve the remainder of his sentence in the UK. Not Shut Up originally published an extract from Gary’s writing on Thai prisons in issue 20. Gary has kept on writing while behind bars, and we hope to help him finish and publish his book through our Academy programme.

Dieland: a prologue Many people have questioned the advisability of publishing an account of life in a Thai prison whilst still captive within the UK prison system. For me the reasons are screamingly obvious. So much so that I started to question the motives of those who were criticising my intentions the loudest. First though, I will issue my stock response, which was originally spoken by a Christian pastor in Dachau concentration camp back in 1944 or thereabouts: First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak out.

I believe the message to be well worth repeating – it can be revised in a way to fit your own circumstances. Put simply, if I don’t speak out then I can not expect others to do so on my behalf.

Besides, there is a secondary reason. The four previous accounts of Thai prisons – Warren Fellows, Australian, “The Damage Done”; Sandra Gregory, English, “Forget you had a daughter”; Colin Martin, Irish, “Welcome to Hell”; Sebastian William (on behalf of [Alan] John Davies), English, “Send them to Hell” – all excellent books in their own right, were published after their authors’ full sentences had been completed. i.e. none were subject to constraints of censorship imposed by prison authorities, nor were they under a gagging order imposed by the terms and rules of their conditions of parole. The first argument levelled by those with a

vested interest in absolving the Thai prison service from censure is that the accounts of the events are not contemporary. It is hard to argue against that point when, as in the case of Warren and Sandra, the author is writing ten or five years after their release.

In my own case, the detractors are ignoring the fact that this book would gather dust until 2042, when my sentence ends, and, if family history is an indicator, I’d have been pushing up daisies since 2020!

About one hundred years ago, Rudyard Kipling published The Naulakha. One of the stanzas prophetically applies to all of the (by now) 200+ British passport holders rotting in Thai jails. You, the reader, would be justified in accusing us of being guilty of not doing sufficient research before coming to Amazing Dieland. You, and this has been maintained by no less a personage than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, would do well to consider that officially up to 30% of those doing time are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. I may well be one of those. The trite bromide, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,” is a calculated insult when applied to us. In the words of Kipling, this is the offence of which we are guilty: Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: “A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

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Non Fiction

CHAPTER 1 An extract My first of many moments of absolute awareness about just how totally fucked my predicament really was came sixteen days after my arrest at Don Muang International Airport for, allegedly, attempting to export 2.4 kilos of heroin out of the Kingdom. I had, stoically, and this came as a big surprise to myself, managed to endure some very brutal questioning and refused to sign an “obligatory” confession admitting guilt. 1 I truly believed that I’d be able to survive a few months in the remand centre, Bombat, and be acquitted when my case came to court.

My epiphany was not physical, instead it was psychological.

It didn’t manifest itself as an angel explaining the facts of nonsecular life to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. My messenger was an embassy pro-consul – I’m British by the way (Welsh in fact) – claiming to have an urgent message from my mother back in the UK. The news wasn’t good either. After the message had been passed, I was totally devastated. So much so that each syllable of the message has been indelibly scoured on each and every atom of my brain.

Before I tell you what my mother was purported to have said, I have to add that each cruel, vicious and mendacious word was delivered with the sole intent of breaking me. Nothing that the Thai prison system could subject me to would reduce me to a lower mental state. It wasn’t for another two years that I learned that the pro-consul had been lying. But, long before then, the damage had been well and truly done and the intended effect achieved. Without any support from my family and insufficient funds (as I had believed then; and therein lies yet another sordid tale of embassy malfeasance) to consider engaging a lawyer, no other choice was open to me other than pleading guilty, and throwing myself on the mercy of the court in the hope of avoiding the death penalty, a stratagem that backfires on each and every Briton who adopts it.

The reputed statement from my mother was: “You can tell Gary he can rot in hell before anyone in the family will help him.”

The effect was instantaneous. I didn’t have to ask the embassy official to repeat the message. Each word was cruelly and deliberately spoken. By the time the word ‘hell’ was delivered, acid tears were etching down my face. By the time the word ‘him’ was pronounced, I collapsed backwards off the bench I sat upon, a gibbering wreck to be carried by the kapos (trustee status prisoners) in building No 4.

Not that the screws (prison guards) could, or would, give a damn, but fortunately for me, a couple of my fellow Thai remand inmates placed me on an unofficial suicide watch. Even though I was very close to suicide throughout my two weeks in Rangsit police detention, I still had some semblance of hope during my interrogation. Now, utterly bereft of all hope, I found life itself the insult, not death. Over the next few days, Sam (himself to die a couple of months later) and Sassavan (Sassy) – none of we

The New CourT Dwarfs, by Chris wilson

three being able to share a common language – pulled me through this crisis. Now I, being British, don’t handle emotions easily, so please excuse me for a little levity here. Going inside myself to recount this traumatic experience, even six years, seven months, two weeks and five days later – today’s date being June 19th 2009 – and, yes, for the record, I probably am anal-retentive – still grievously upsets me. Had Sam and Sassy not been such spiritually generous people, then this book would not have been written.

Perhaps, though, “what goes around, comes around”. Although I’m truly horrified at the manner chosen to test my own spiritual generosity. Yesterday, Sassy returned from his third and final court, the Dika, or Supreme Court. This is the court whose verdict really counts. Irrespective of the verdicts in the lower courts, a Dika verdict is the one that is binding. Rightly or wrongly, and that’s for you to decide, the prosecution in Thailand has three chances to secure either a guilty verdict or have the judges pronounce a sentence upon the accused with which they are happy.

This can, and often does, lead to verdicts that are completely incomprehensible to outside observers. Verdicts such as “Not Guilty”, “Not Guilty” and “Death” being common.

No great surprise, Sassy was fighting his drugs case (i.e. pleading

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not guilty), and was found guilty and received a death sentence.

You’ll recall my own, implied, earlier, strategy was to chicken out and plead guilty in the hope of avoiding a death sentence.

Sassy’s verdict and sentence were par for the course. What was a surprise though was his uctun, or Appeal Court verdict, delivered four years ago which found him not guilty and (unusually) leave to make bail. Sassy was taken off death row; his shackles were removed early in 2005. Naturally the prosecution appealed this act of largesse. They could well have settled for a life sentence and left it at that. Had that been the case, then Sassy would have been like me and had his whole life sentence reduced to forty years in the December 2007 amnesty. But this was not to be. Sassy had some compelling evidence to justify his innocence and in reality the uctun court had no other option than to pronounce him not guilty. Sassy stayed with us here in D2’s non-death row section.

Here he sat, becoming a fixture until yesterday (over four years later) confidently content, as we all were along with him, that when the Dika judges finally adjudicated his case, he’d again be found not guilty and, within a few days of the final sentence, be released from the Hilton, a free man.

It is now the 20th of June. It is pretty hard for me to write these closing words on my account of Sassy’s case.

Sassy duly returned from hearing the Dika court verdict read out. To the surprise of all of us, and not least to his own surprise, it was ruled that he was guilty. [Sassy had committed the cardinal sin in Dieland’s patronage system of not making an arrangement to bribe the judges to arrive at the correct verdict even though it was obvious that he was innocent]. Worse was to come. His original trial sentence was upheld and upon returning to the Hilton he was re-shackled and immediately placed back on D2’s death row. Far worse news reached me at 13.00. I’d not seen Sassy during death row’s brief morning exercise period, 08.00 – 09.00 this morning.

My own Thai language skills are still woefully (but intentionally) lacking, so I could only make the most cursory of enquiries as to how he was taking it; I didn’t get very far. About all that I managed to learn was that he was sick.

I made a far more determined effort at mid-day when death row inmates are again let out of their cells from 13.00 – 14.00 for their final exercise period of the day. I really wish I had not. To my absolute desolation, I learned that Sassy had been successful in his own attempt at suicide.

Much later...

Of course, not every day in a Thai prison is as bad as either my first days in Bombat remand centre or these past few days. Sad to report though, they ain’t much better. Surviving day to day, hour by hour even, is of paramount importance. Only once you have taken care of the necessities, water, food, medical attention, can the less urgent matters be attended to, i.e. clothing, cleanliness, mentally preparing for your defence in court or sourcing vital documents for an appeal or “FF”2, my euphemism for an appeal to

La Mere, by Chris Wilson

the Monarch for some form of sentence relief. Once the principal duties have been completed, then, and only then, do we have (precious little) time for luxury pursuits such as socialising, study, letter writing and reading.

There are some 139 prisons in Thailand, approximating two to every province. As far as I’m aware, sadly there are no co-ed prisons such as they have in neighbouring Laos. Each province will have a men’s prison accompanied by a women’s counterpart.

Bangkok, being Bangkok, boasts four establishments: Bombat, Lat Yao and The Special Prison which are the men’s prisons; and the women’s counterpart – Klong Prem women’s prison. Confusingly, Bombat is sometimes referred to as Bombud and Lat Yao as Lad Yao or just plain Klong Prem. All three men’s prisons adopt the sound-bite, The Bangkok Hilton although that name truly belongs to Bang Kwang or Big Tiger as it is called by the Thais.

No matter which prison you go to, nothing can prepare you for the ordeal you will be facing. The most common emotion you’ll experience at first will be sheer terror. Then, having become

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Non Fiction

acclimatised to the fact that an excruciatingly painful demise may not be so immediate, the terror does lessen marginally to become a duller awareness of a fear that the chances of long term survival have become merely slim.

It must be stressed that my 53rd birthday was celebrated just weeks before my arrest. Even allowing, and only in my darkest moments of anguish would I allow for this, that if I was convicted, I would still need a sentence of no more than ten years were I to have a life, albeit brief, beyond the prison, any prison, walls.

Now still today, I’m fixated on this overall ten year term. Six and a half years ago I was, irrationally, of the opinion that it would be a relatively easy matter to have the narcotics charges against me replaced with the more accurate charge of money laundering, thereby facing a lesser sentence.

Despite having lived in Thailand for some seven years before my arrest, my naïveté regarding how the Thai legal system works is a common misunderstanding experienced by all farang in the system. It wasn’t until almost a year after my trial had finished that I began to comprehend the reality of narco-politics. In Bombat our ignorance was nothing short of criminal. Certainly for us British vital information was, and still is, deliberately withheld from us by our embassy.

Slowly though the reality broadcast by young Pip began to percolate through our consciousness as, one by one, our farang and nigerian (any African national), compatriots went to court for their own verdicts and sentences and returned to D4 for their obligatory 72 hours on the bar – a process that all those on drug charges must endure – but which I won’t talk about in this chapter – and related what was in store for us. A sample:

disillusioned. Nice while it lasted though, and it kept my lotterywinning beliefs alive for a few months.

It is difficult to maintain passionate emotions for extended periods. In its own season terror gave way to fear, which in turn became more subdued and infrequent. Fear giving way to shame.

Shame though, as a less passionate emotion, can endure for an awfully long time, and there is much in Thai prisons to feel disgraced about. The things that shame me are not necessarily the things that mortify others, and doubtless vice versa. One aspect of Thai prison life that shames all farang and nigerians is shackles.

I have no doubt whatsoever that shackles are used as the most effective way to break our spirit and to curb rebellion. I and my colleagues felt extremely shamed being shackled. I’ve recently learned that not all of my countrymen – allowing that the English are actually a part of the United Kingdom of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland – would do almost anything to be spared this indignity. Well, much to my own detriment, I believed this source of information once before, so my skepticism on its accuracy is most assuredly well founded. It transpires that the embassy have letters from English inmates requesting that they not ask for the shackles to be removed.

The Thais though appear to revel in being shackled, wearing them as a badge of office as it were. Perhaps in some very perverse stretch of logic, it answers some inner need to be a part of a group?

It is woefully inadequate to say that shackles reduced us to the status of animals. In our own minds they degraded us well below that level. Some animals are tethered for a period of time, I’ve yet to hear of any animal being tethered 24/7/365.

Dodi, heroin, life Danba, heroin, life Fast Track Paul, cocaine, life Young Pip, yaba, life Napoleon, heroin, death My own worst case estimate of ten years, well OK I’ll be content with twelve years even, depressingly evaporated with each new report. By the time my own trial came due in May 2003, I was wishing for a number, any number, 99 years even; anything but a life or death verdict. Once again, a serious miscalculation, as for a Briton the ideal (provided it is not carried out) sentence is Death!

By then we farang had become aware that Thailand operated a prisoner repatriation scheme with certain countries, the UK being one of them, and when the sentence was a numbered sentence – anywhere from 12-100 years – the inmate could return to their home country to serve out a much reduced sentence after only four years in a Thai prison. When the sentence was life, then the Thai prison time was extended to eight years. Of course, things weren’t exactly like that for the Brits. Nevertheless, a very real feeling that all was not entirely hopeless began to surface. A feeling that persisted until I came to the Hilton and was very soon

1 It is an arrogant boast, as well as being on public record, that the Royal Thai Police get a signed confession of guilt from at least 95% of those accused by them within 72 hours of their arrest. How I managed to resist the RTP’s interrogation techniques for so long remains a mystery to me to this day.

2 FF translates as Fratricides Folly. For Britons alone, an FF is truly a folly, whereas Thais and other nationals can sometimes expect a full reduction of sentence, for us, the British embassy routinely intervenes and substitutes a request for a partial reduction of sentence.

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T

his year, Not Shut Up is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Started those many years ago as a local prison creative writing magazine, we have since expended to cover all of the arts in all places of incarceration all over the country.

But where will we be in another decade?

Will we grow or shrink? Change or stay the same? Learn or languish?

As a writer, translator, publisher and humble editor of this wonderful magazine, I do a lot of work around what we call “the creative industries”. And let me tell you, they are in a mighty spot of bother. Film, music and publishing are all losing money to the internet. Digital technology means anyone can now be a director, a composer or a published writer. Most can share their work with anyone around the globe, free of charge. As the global economy is going through major disturbances, a lot of arts and education is being cut, especially from those beyond the very edges of society.

But let us talk baking for a second...

I have always thought that arts behind bars are seen as a kind of glacé cherry, placed on top of the icing that is education provision, which coats the cake that is the core business of an establishment (security, health, food, movement). Only once that core business is “baked” can we send people to education, and only once education runs smoothly can we think of sprinkling it with some creative programmes (visual arts, creative writing, performing, etc).

But what if we acknowledge that the cake itself is stale? What is the point of coating and decorating something which is inherently inedible?

I want to suggest that for the most part, exclusion from society doesn’t benefit either the individual condemned to exclusion or society itself. Reoffending

Being creative about being creative Not Shut Up developing brand new solutions to age old problems,

by Marek Kazmierski, Managing Editor

stop lives being destroyed and work going to waste? How can we learn from all these mistakes if not by thinking creatively?

With over 200,000 people held in custody in Britain today, what if we could all work, learn and relax in new and innovative ways? Inmate and staff alike?

Imagine we started each day developing brand new solutions to age old problems?

As Tim Robertson of the Koestler Trust said in an interview we published with him last year: “I would like to see prisons not as bleak warehouses, but creative learning places, and I would like to see the arts being fundamental to the work they do. I would like to see every prison become an arts academy, to see prisoners developing creative skills which would help them develop all kinds of practical and spiritual and emotional levels to who they are, then come back and make a positive contribution to society.”

How we do this and how long it may take us is up for heated debate. But right now, Not Shut Up has three immediate aims: 1 Make our magazine grow, with more content and new readers, in and out of custody 2 Run the Not Shut Up Academy, which helps writers and artists in their post-custody careers

statistics show half of all those released today will be re-convicted within a year.

Locking up 3000 refugees in detention centres is wastefully expensive and ignores more purposeful alternatives. Few ever consider the 40,000 people sectioned in secure hospitals, and the other 60,000 voluntarily surrendered to similar wards.

And what about children in care? Young offenders? What options, what ideas do they have about their futures? How can we

3 Develop the capacity to produce and distribute books, ebooks and art works by the unfree That should keep us very, very busy over the next decade. Meanwhile, tell us why you think creativity is the way forward in keeping people free? What is your experience of the arts? Do you feel included or excluded by cultural provision?

The best answers will be published in the June issue of Not Shut Up!

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Advice

Good design is everything

by Phil Tristram, Creative Director

I

started realizing I had a skill (of drawing and art) when I started junior school. Being ‘good at art’ was something that ran in my family, so it was only a matter of time before it got noticed in my art classes. But it’s funny how my natural gift had an effect on other school kids. They started to befriend me. I started getting asked to advise on other pupils’ art, and when my work got framed and put up in the school, I was getting known as “the one that’s good at art!”

On one occasion, I got into a fight with an older thug in the playground. He quickly started to get the better of me, but just when I thought I was going get a thumping, another thug, a complete stranger to me, stopped the fight, saying “Leave him alone.

He’s really good at art”. At first I thought he was taking the piss, but it appears because I was seen as having a ‘gift’ he stepped in to protect me. I wonder if having the same ‘gift’ would mean the same to today’s kids?

Well, that was 40 years ago, and it’s a very different world now. Kids today are surrounded by so much more complex visual communication. The digital age has given us a creative feast that I for one are loving every eyeful! Films, TV and

still-photography have all benefited from the ability to simply produce and edit creativity, with a minimum of ease. In my industry of magazines, the computer has been a revelation since its introduction in the late 80’s. It was so difficult to do this simplistic design task back then. But today designers have magical tools at their fingertips. They are able to create beautiful complex art, stunning photographs (from their phones!) and even print an object in 3D. Surely there has never been a better time for being creative? Or is all this technology getting in the way?

Recently, I took the above picture of St.Pauls on the way to work. A couple of clicks on my camera phone, and there was a stunning and very satisfying image. Simple. A piece of gorgeous art in 10 seconds. But did I get lucky or was there more to it than that? Well, as Pablo Picasso famously said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

I think this highlights that personal creativity is everywhere, you’ve just got keep your eyes and mind open. Don’t be afraid to try something different.

Some of my best design work has come from ‘happy accidents,’ where I have experimented with painting, and recently

with photography and video.

But even with all this fabulous and ridiculously easy (and cheap) technology to hand I have found myself longing to get back to the basics. Many of my fellow colleagues are doing the same, taking extra lessons in life drawing, print making and even glass sculpture. All of these people are designers like me and well into their digital technology, but have felt the need for something more tangible, and raw. I recently started oil painting again after years of working with computers. The smell of the oils took me back many years when I was learning to paint with my family. It’s such a fabulous way to enjoy being creative, and if I’m honest nice to get my hands dirty!

Inspired by my 7 year old son, I have taken to experimenting with simple pencil drawings, which have reminded me again that the pencil sketch is the foundation of all good art and design. It is by far the best way of visually explaining any design project, from the front cover of Not Shut Up to the most complex new machine or building. So, keep up the drawing. Draw what you see, or even more excitingly draw what you think.

Everybody has got some creativity in them, be it writing or art. But you never know until you find yourself working at it!

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English PEN Project

Running to stand still

Stories from the Inside This issue features several highlights from the recent English PEN Readers & Writers project “Running to Stand Still - Stories from the Inside”, an anthology of prose, poems, memoir and book reviews from over 50 different prisons across the UK.

Writing as a Lifeline Foreword by Jackie Kay

Nelson Mandela, a man who as we all know spent 27 years in prison and who died in December last year, was a great inspiration to many. A writer as well as a prisoner and a president, he said and did much that could lift the spirits and focus the mind. ‘The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but rising every time we fall,’ he said. Writing is a way of rising every time we fall, or as our title suggests - Running to Stand Still. Writing can throw us a lifeline: a different line caught by various hands, all showing particular lifelines; and writing gives us a second chance. The very act of writing stories, poems or reviews, the attempt to hone and articulate, to make vivid and express, to search for the words and find them, can spin the thread and offer solace. Writing is a lifeline.

But it can also follow the line of our life.

This year there were over 400 submissions in varied forms from 55 prisons: memoir, poetry, short stories and reviews, as well as flash fiction. The poetry was so strong that we made a point of making it a separate category in its own right. People from Inverness to Dartmoor, Norfolk to Newcastle, across the length and breadth of the country responded to the three themes: SUCH A JOURNEY / IN MY IMAGINATION / MY FIRST LOVE. I expected that one of those themes might prove to be more popular

than the others, but this was not the case. People wrote in all forms inspired by all of these themes. I was particularly keen not to pick a theme that would hem in or trap, but to pick ideas that might spark off memories, reignite the imagination and surprise the writer. It was also Nelson Mandela who said that when he read Shakespeare in Robben Island, the four walls of the prison collapsed. Clearly he was talking metaphorically, but it is a strong image. Reading and writing are liberating: they can open your mind, knock down walls, open windows and doors, let the light in.

Heather Stevenson-Snell’s poem ‘Such a Journey’ resonated with me. Like all of the best poems, it drew me into its world, asking questions rather than answering them. There is much to enjoy in Running to Stand Still: pieces that will make you think, take you back and make you pause for thought. Writing whose honesty and bravery you might recognise and applaud. Ralph Anderson, winner of the prose category, is exemplary. A piece of work as vivid as it is candid, a devastatingly moving story about alcoholism and the way it affects the ego and the mind - it had me hooked from the first line.

Writing is a lifeline, but to do it you also put your neck on the line. You take risks. You expose your heart. You draw a line in

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the sand. I want to thank every single person who entered the competition for taking that risk. I want to thank PEN for making that possible.

Good books can change your lives. This is what Jeanne Wilding, the winner of the book review section, so eloquently proves, detailing her change in attitude to capital punishment. I found reading other reviews fascinating, David Tattum’s review made me want to return to the books, to re-read them. Books that you’ve loved are like old houses, you want to go back and open their windows. HB, the winner of the Flash Fiction prize, recreates ‘The Old Creepy House’ vividly.

I have found huge inspiration in various visits to prisons over the years, from Wormwood Scrubs to Pentonville to Maidstone.

I was particularly inspired last year by a visit to HMP Styal and by the dedication of the librarian and writer-in-residence there.

Reading my work to the women in Styal reminded me that writing is above all a conversation with the reader. Hopefully, many people will hold this small book in their hands, on their life lines, and feel in the best of company, the company of kindred spirits, the company of other writers running to stand still, and still crossing the finishing line.

Winter’s Lament Cold bones turn the key Frost clings, death’s breath is upon the line silencing the web.

Winter’s touch chills the stream ice forms, the still pools are still, the flowing cold cries snow.

The frost sealed bitter door tombs open, allowing winter’s kiss to caress the hearth.

Old flames die in the light embrace.

It is dark now, darkest is the hour Dark is my heart Cold are the songs.

KB Pendleton, HMP Kennet

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Poetry

Such a Journey You championed your cause with a single mind Gave twenty years away; laid it down on the ground Raised it up like a clock; cloaked others Then yourself, almost You sat through each exam, tapping out a tune Fist clenched; sun burning through your eyes And the moon – speeding days and years Took you on such a journey – like Ulysses!

You shared your bread with anyone who was hungry Poured wine; gave time; more time Sitting in the stillness of your garden Watching flitting birds And the sprawling dog stretched; eyes still closed And the sitting dog, panting; yawned And the next-door’s cat ran the length Of the top of the fence; each one of its hairs on end And then, one day everything stopped And your murder was complete And your murder was discreet And people came with paints and brushes, to hide the truth You championed your cause with exhausted grace Gave twenty years, to the day, with a sigh And as they finished painting you over The sky bled red, from one eye.

Heather Stevenson-Snell, HMP Bronzefield

My first love My first love, from your first breath yet until my last, a son, pulled wet and blinking into being.

My First Love Into wonder, into pain, a heart thawed, drip by warming drip again.

First steps, first words, this beating muscle stirs.

And stirring finds its metre there, of parents’ triptych, hope, love, care.

My first love is become too large, a deep too vast to chart.

Encompass now the moon my loves, Encompassed now my heart.

Anonymous, HMP Bure

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Not Shut Up Featured Artist

Interview: Stephen Peterson Preparing his one-man Freeflow Arts show at Garden Court Chambers, Feb 2014

NSUP: Can you remember the first time you made contact with art in your life, ever?

Stephen Peterson: I have a few memories, like I used to want to be an airline pilot, and used to make Airfix models as a kid, then try and draw the different planes I saw, but it’s not something I stuck with, it was more about the planes than the drawing. Then, I suppose art became unimportant.

NSUP: School?

SP: I was never into art classes, preferred languages and

computers, which were new then, the world of programming and IT, so I never saw myself as a creative person in that way.

NSUP: Do you remember the first time you put pencil to paper, or paintbrush to canvas?

SP: It was in a healthcare department, my first experience of

custody. A lady encouraged me to join the class, reluctantly I said “I can’t draw” and I didn’t really believe I could. She gave me some books and showed some still-lives, like a dead fox’s skull she had in there. She said “Why don’t you try drawing the skull?”, but no way was I going to start with that, so I opened a wildlife book and there was a robin sitting on a branch, so I sat and copied out this bird with colour pencils. The art lady said my perspective was good and I had a natural eye. I thought “She’s just trying to butter me up and make me come back next week”. But I did put the robin in an envelope and sent it to my mum. And I did go back the next week and tackled the fox skull. Which was a challenge, doing all the angles and the tones. Art became, at first, a time killer. Also, it was a way I could draw things for my family, like a rabbit for Easter, for my mum or my sister, and it was one way of making up for the upset and the other things they had to deal with. One way of communicating with them which was good.

I guess making a work of art is not just something you do for yourself, it is a gift for others, it’s sharing something by challenging

one’s own lack of skill or confidence. Not showing off, but actually the opposite of that, being quite open and generous.

What I didn’t understand initially was that putting pencil to paper you put a lot of emotions and feelings in. How you feel at any given time affects how hard you press that pencil, what comes out the other side. My family sent in books on watercolours and other art mediums, so I used these ‘Teach Yourself’ books to understand more of what I was trying to do. And it was always on a very small scale, like that robin which my mum still has in her purse. And you do struggle with confidence. Although I’ve had all this positive feedback from Koestler and won lots of prizes, people look at my artwork and it’s still hard to feel, to believe that you’re good enough. One guy in the class, I used to look at his work, he was amazing, I always dreamt of being able to work like him.

Interactions with other prisoners, other artists, are so important.

And I was still drawing and painting quite small pieces. There was an officer there who was also an artist, and he said that I needed to open up, that there were things which needed to come out from the heart, from life experiences, and I had to start painting things bigger, that confidence would come once I tackled that scale.

NSUP: When did you realise you had talent?

SP: One time they were staging a panto, so I volunteered to paint

the backdrops. I painted a couple of knights in armour, about five foot tall, on a prison sheet, and everyone said they looked so real, like shiny metal. So, for a joke, I called it “One night” and sent it into the Koestler. That year, there were over a thousand entries into oil and acrylic and I won first prize! I started then thinking, well if that was a joke, it wasn’t like I spent hours working on it, maybe I have a chance? So at that point I felt I wanted to have fun with art, it was making me feel good about myself, I could channel feelings and it was another way of working through the therapy using art, but I didn’t necessarily see it only like that. I started to think about therapy and channelling parts of me, parts of other

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Interview

people, through group work, onto canvas. I suppose it felt like I was telling a story through my work. Before that, I was only copying pictures, then I chose a subject, like drugs and alcohol, reflecting on my past behaviour, put together a whole painting which really tuned into something that captured people’s imagination, through the process of telling stories. Some of the comment cards from Southbank exhibition of the Koestler, people would say that they had spent two hours just looking at one piece of my work! I like that, I like the pictures to talk to people, and for people to talk to them. In one painting, which was a mirror of sorts, people fed back saying they would go into therapy themselves after seeing that.

nsup: Is art in any way useful or even necessary to our lives?

Would yours be the same if you didn’t paint?

sp: I do sometimes wonder what would have happened to me

if I hadn’t gone to that class and drawn that robin? Art classes are now all about shut in prisons, because art is not part of the core curriculum. The prisons are missing the point how people expressing themselves on canvas or paper, or even cutting materials up and making pictures that way, can improve their confidence, how it can give them valuable skills on the outside and more importantly another avenue to express themselves.

Confidence is a big thing, being given an opportunity, everyone thinking “I can’t do this”, but they feel inspired when they hear about my work. I show them the robin, which is rubbish, but it’s a start, so it makes sense to them.

nsup: Overall, what have you learnt about art and its role, use, relevance?

sp: A lot of establishments are missing the point, taking creative

nsup: Now you’ve scaled up and have this amazing body of work courses off the curriculum, because it can’t be directly linked to to show, what next for you and your art?

sp: It’s quite organic for me. For example, my nan is suffering

from Alzheimer’s. It’s a big thing in our society, to see someone going through that, their mind disappearing. So I want to make a collage of how you go from being a whole person to becoming a hollow shell. I also think I’m quite illustrative, so that could be a future too, to help tell stories in art. I enjoy painting big now, ten foot by eight foot was one of my largest pieces, it looked a bit like The Last Supper but it was also about death row. And I did one about prisoner visitors’ days and that was 24 foot long, and my latest piece is quite political. I’ve had the idea in my head quite a while, did a rough outline and it sat in my sketch book for about a year, fifteen months, and maybe it was doing the show in Garden Court Chambers that made me go back to it. I know if I painted it a year ago, it would have looked very different than it does now. It’s about the press, called Media Puppets (see it on page 2). Trying to tell a visual story about manipulation, which happens on all levels, so I guess I try to open people’s minds, free their thinking. Like a picture I did about reflection, where I attached a mirror to the painting, that I think is important – what do you see? Who do you see? I’ve had to look at myself, the therapy and courses in prisons, I think it’s good for everyone to do that.

getting you a job. Well, it can help you get a job. For me, the reason I can do good graphic design and illustrations is because I built up confidence when I started drawing inside.

nsup: Amazing how something as innocent as creating a painting can be so threatening, so hard to approach. sp: I know some of the paintings I create are powerful and may affect people in one way or another, but I’m not afraid any more if people like them or not. When people start out, they worry too much about what others will think. People like different types of art, and it should be more about expressing yourself, about selfconfidence and not what others will say about it, if it’s their thing.

I think art behind bars is so important, and it has frustrated me going through that, seeing courses shut, not being seen as having any value. Just the therapeutic value of being able to draw, locked behind your door, that can change lives. I can now sit and draw and then look up – that’s hours of my life gone. It’s a confidence builder, a way of expressing yourself, of communicating with your family, your friends. You can’t buy presents in prison, but the most appreciated gifts are those which come from the heart, like the matchstick jewellery models I have made for my family. nsup: So it’s not a time killer, it is a way of reclaiming that time.

Of making it really happen. Stephen, thank you!

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Gallery

not

shut

up

A selection of art from Stephen Peterson’s Garden Court Chambers 2014 show

Release - Release Day by stephen Peterson

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Release - suppoRt outweighs temptation by stephen peterson

Release - BRain Washed society by stephen Peterson

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From our blogs

Prison Librarian

K

Reading on Her Majesty’s Pleasure, Part 2

nowledge travels well. Like International Diners’ Card and Visa, you can take it anywhere and it’ll always pay its way.

It needs no suitcase and no vaccinations and takes no excuses from border guards as to why it cannot enter.

Did you ever hear of an immigration appeal tribunal against a diploma? In fact, knowledge is more likely to get you in than keep you out – as long as you don’t let on you understand too well the systems designed to control the borders.

There are no laws that demand your knowledge is ‘Something to Declare’, and it can be smuggled across time zones faster than 60 seconds in a Lamborghini.

It doesn’t need swallowing, bottling or otherwise concealing, you can hold it in your head (and in the set of your shoulders) choosing to reveal or conceal it as you see fit. And no one is ever going to hold you in a locked room and demand you shit out an ‘A’ Level . Knowledge occupies a space no bigger than a two week visa, and no matter how much of it you accumulate the proof will never weigh as heavy as the books that held it before you refined it down to the sharp point of your own intelligence.

In a way, every book is a passport to a possible destination. Most obviously you might think of stories, the made up stuff that allows you to unfurl the sails of imagination and set out on a voyage to unexpected places. But perhaps you don’t think that at all. Perhaps stories bore you, or make you scoff in disbelief, or else are

Blood diamonds by José orozco

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The Prison Librarian

just a struggle to read, all those words backing up like a 20 mile tail back on the road to the airport. But whatever your experience, whether bad or good, that very act of concentration focuses the mind, allows you to narrow down to a point no bigger than the dot of your own ‘I’, and the everyday world slips away at the edges of your tunnel vision. And for the length of time you turn the pages, those pages in turn, turn you… into a better reader, a quicker thinker, a broader minded person.

But perhaps the package tour of fiction really isn’t your thing. Perhaps you’re more interested in the long haul.

The geographies, and histories, and philosophies of learning that map across the world whole new ways of seeing it.

Whatever your preference though, if every book is a passport then every library is an airport ready to take you off beyond the

limits of your own self-imposed border controls.

Recently, your Prison Librarian has been on something of a busman’s holiday to check out what some of those other literary airports are like. It’s all very well talking about the freedom pass of knowledge from inside the confines of a prison library, but what if you want to extend the vacation into the world of words after release? Will a local library, a college library, even a university library be quite so welcoming?

The news on the ground is good. Prison, local, college, the libraries are all pretty much the same. They all have books, and shelves and someone who can point you in the right direction. Some are quieter than others, some are bigger, in some you can eat sandwiches and in others you most certainly cannot, and in general prison libraries are just as well equipped as the

local variety. Most prison libraries are run by the local Local Authority and are treated as far as possible as another branch in the literary tree of learning, so you should feel very much at home whether you’re using an outside, or an inside library for the first time.

And bear in mind, if you’re feeling like your prison experience is a bar to entry, it could actually stand you in good stead. If you ever have occasion to visit the British Library, not only do they take mug shots on your first visit, but there’s a thorough search every time you leave a reading room that’d be the pride of any OSG. Your Prison Librarian

Books to journey with – a useful list Shantaram, by Gregory David roberts – Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier.

“At once a high-kicking, eyegouging adventure, a love saga and a savage yet tenderly lyrical fugitive vision.”

Time OuT the art of travel, alain de Botton – The urge to be somewhere else is one of the abiding traits of human nature; in The Art of Travel author Alain de Botton (The Consolations of Philosophy, How Proust Can Change Your Life) sets

out to discover why in his own inimitably witty and discursive way.

“Lucid, fluid, uplifting.”

SundAy TimeS an IDIot aBroaD: the travel DIarIeS of Karl PIlKInGton, Karl Pilkington, ricky Gervais, Stephen merchant – Karl Pilkington isn’t keen on travelling. Given the choice, he’ll go on holiday to Devon or Wales or, at a push, eat English food on a package holiday in Majorca. Which isn’t exactly Michael Palin, is it? So what happened when he was convinced by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant to go on an epic adventure to see the Seven Wonders of the World? “move over, michael Palin.” emPIre

eat, Pray, love, by elizabeth Gilbert – It’s 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby - and she doesn’t want any of it.

A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance.

“A writer of incandescent talent.” Annie PrOuLx on the roaD, Jack Kerouac – On The Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac’s works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century. Like

nearly all of Kerouac’s writing, On The Road is thinly fictionalised autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac’s real life friends, lovers and fellow travellers.

“The most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as ‘beat’.” new yOrK TimeS if there are books that you’ve read that have taken you on a journey worth writing about, Prison Librarian is interested to spread the word. Send your book reviews to us – address on page 53!

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Future Arts

The DigiTal agE Creating in an age of computers, progams and world wide webs is no easy ask, especially for those trapped behind bars.

Piers Barber, our Online Editor, helps ease you into the brave new world of virtual arts, in the good old fashioned paper pages of Not Shut Up.

T

he world is going digital and it’s hard to keep up – no matter what your circumstances. Blogs, social networks, streaming sites and e-books: an irreversible revolution has occurred in the ways that way we create, consume and share information and culture. From 2014 onwards, Not Shut Up is starting to tackle these rapidly evolving digital shifts.

The internet dominates the 21st century. It has altered human relationships, with Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging causing permanent changes to the ways we communicate with friends and colleagues. Online dating has changed the way we look for romance. Programs such as Skype have made it cheap and easy to instantly interact with people on the other side of the world. GPS mapping technology has made navigation a breeze.

Newspapers no longer dominate news distribution, with online blogs and microblogging sites such as Twitter now making it possible to receive news as-and-when it happens. This does cause problems – rumours and propaganda can now be spread more easily, and information overload is becoming a genuine concern. Yet online sources are faster, cheaper and more visual, saving money in manufacturing and distribution and prompting the development of exciting new interactive and accessible sources.

The internet has also irreversibly changed television and music, thanks predominantly to the birth of streaming websites such as Netflix and Spotify, which allow users to listen to millions of songs free of charge via their computer or smartphone. Blogs and sharing via social networks have replaced newspapers, specialised magazines and – increasingly – word of mouth as the most influential methods of discovering new culture.

Most importantly, at least from Not Shut Up’s perspective, the internet has transformed the world of publishing. Anybody with an internet connection can now start a blog, making it possible to distribute work to a potentially enormous audience, free of charge.

Digital texts, known as e-books, now allow authors to professionally share their work with far lower production costs, though making money this way is still a real challenge. Hosting websites such as

Issuu allow publishers to release magazines and journals as they would appear in print, without having to dedicate funding to printing.

Similarly, the ways we consume literature has changed forever.

Readers can now access virtually all genres and formats of writing online, with practically every subject niche easily possible to track down using search engines such as Google. The internet is a democratic and social publishing medium: it has encouraged conversation, and removes barriers set by editorial biases and self-interested marketing decisions. Portable devices such as Kindles now let readers carry thousands of e-book titles on the move. They’re translatable, can be read in the dark and are more environmentally friendly than books, too.

Not Shut Up is fully embracing this changing digital landscape.

In recent months, our website has been transformed, with the aim of turning Not Shut Up into the premier platform for the arts of the unfree on the internet.

Next issue, we’ll take you through how we plan to make that happen and how it can benefit you, even if you are still one of the over 200,000 unfree across the UK. Piers Barber, Online Editor

Piers Barber Online Editor

I’m a writer, researcher and Not Shut Up’s digital guru. Having studied in Edinburgh and California, I carried out extensive research into prisons and other social issues affecting Los Angeles during the 1990s. I joined Not Shut Up in September last year, and am focused on leading the transformation of our website into the leading platform for the arts of the unfree on the world wide web.

Not Shut Up’s new website can be found at www.notshutup.org.

We can also be found on Twitter @NotShutUpUK and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NotShutUpmag. Any queries, comments or contributions to the website can be emailed to piers@notshutup.org.

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T

hey all sat there staring into space.

Six diamonds and each of them worth a small fortune. Martin was told of the other stories. How Papa had come to the rescue of each and every one of them. Together they all looked towards Maria. The question had to be asked.

“Do you know where they are hidden?”

“No. I only went with him once, to Seville, to buy the last one. He told me the whole story, how he’d been there with his Papa Jesus before the war. I didn’t want the responsibility of knowing. It made me angry that he had something so small and of such value hidden away.”

Then the questions started between the brothers. Well, where are they then?

Where would he put them? Were they in the bedroom? Should they look there? What should they do? Just as Maria was about to start shouting the odds at them because all this talk had made her angry, Father Fontanari arrived, closely followed by Doctor Eradis and the nurse. The kitchen was now full to overflowing with people and Maria quickly took the new arrivals upstairs leaving her five uncles behind.

The brothers spoke together, at first saying that they should be ashamed to be speaking about the diamonds like that.

And then saying how daft they had all been.

Surely he would have left instructions of some sort. But really they each of them knew their father too well. He would never have put anything into writing, a will or legal paper, he was too scared the tax authorities would find out. After all, hadn’t he earned his money over all these years without ever declaring a single peseta to them in tax? So what should they do? Start looking maybe?

“Well, it took you all night to find the membrillo – we’ll be here till Christmas trying to find a few tiny diamonds, won’t we?” said Pedro.

“But we should at least make a start. No?” said Martin.

Manolo sighed. He didn’t know what to do about the diamonds, but he did know that he wanted to hear what Doctor Eradis had to say, so he left and went upstairs. To his utter amazement his father had his eyes open and

Buried treasure PA RT 4

Juan Cortez has lived all of his 85 years in rural Spain. Now he is dying, his many sons and daughters come to discover a huge family secret... or two... or maybe three? Just how many diamonds does old Juan have? He had used them so often in the past to bail his many children out of all sorts of trouble, will they make them rich after he is gone? Will this wealth be a blessing or a curse? The final chapter of this amazing story is finally here! he was listening to the Doctor and to Maria.

Papa Juan was making an effort to say something but he was barely audible.

Doctor Eradis said for Manolo to bring the rest of the brothers up as this might be the last time they would be able to make themselves heard to their father. They all trooped in and stood around the bed. Papa was holding Maria’s hand, which it seemed he didn’t want to let go of. One by one the brothers went close to him, to speak softly next to his ear, to say the things they wanted to say to him, to tell him they loved him and to say their final messages to him. Father Fontanari was quietly praying at the foot of the bed, his ancient bible in his hands and everyone else crammed around.

It was Martin who spoke out loud what they were all thinking.

“Papa,” he said. “We have all been sharing our own stories of the diamonds. How you helped all of us.”

Papa Juan moved his head slightly. He made a little sound and slowly and with great effort his eyes flickered open as he quickly surveyed the scene before him.

“Papa,” Martin continued. “We need to know where you have hidden the diamonds.

We are sorry to ask, but no one seems to know. Where are they Papa?”

Martin glanced at Manolo for support, and beckoned for him to speak.

“It’s true Papa. I’m not sure we should be asking, but maybe you could tell us.”

“We are all here Papa. It’s me, Francisco, Papa.”

“And me, Pablo, Papa.”

“Me too, Pedro, Papa.” ”If you can, Papa. Please tell us,” Martin continued.

And there were murmurs of agreement at this statement from all of them. Even Father Fontanari and Doctor Eradis were now anxious to know where these mysterious

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Fiction

diamonds were! Papa moved his hand away from Maria’s and with an enormous effort moved his first two fingers out in front of his hand which he tried without success to lift.

“He’s pointing,” Martin said.

“To what?” Said Pedro.

Papa Juan managed now to move his hand away from his body, struggling with all his might to raise his hand into the air, to make his sign and trying desperately to speak.

“He’s pointing downwards. There. Down there, look!” Francisco said.

“Where Papa? Under the bed maybe?

Papa, are they under the bed?” Pedro was excited.

“No!” Papa groaned and they all stepped forward to try and catch the old man’s next syllable.

“Not under the bed? Then perhaps downstairs somewhere?” said Martin.

Papa moved his head slightly, clearly

indicating that this suggestion too was incorrect. He tried again to lift his hand.

Where was he pointing to now? Outside?

“What about the garden Papa, are they hidden in the garden?” Pedro this time asked.

“Si.” “Madre Mia! He’s hidden the things in the garden,” Francisco exclaimed.

“Let’s go and look!” said Martin.

“Martin, please. Have some respect,” said Pablo.

But the Doctor was ahead of them all.

“Enough, enough. He’s very weak, please now, let me attend to him. Please all of you go downstairs. Wait for me there.” And all the brothers dutifully left their father’s bedroom.

With the nurse’s help, Maria and the Doctor made Papa Juan comfortable.

They changed the drips by the bedside and attended to him as best they could. Finally,

and before joining everyone downstairs, Maria bent forward and kissed her grandfather on the forehead. He gripped her hand and she thought of all those wonderfully strong hugs they used to share, so she told him, “Papa Juan, por favor, let’s not hug as if it was for the last time. Is that OK with you, Papa Juan? Just this once please?”

Although she didn’t know for sure, she could swear that she noticed a little smile dance across his old eyes and his grip on her hand tightened. Stronger than before.

Stronger than she’d felt for a while, she thought.

When Maria went downstairs Father Fontanari was addressing the brothers, telling them how the Church, their family Church for over four generations, needed as much help as it could get and please to remember their faith once they had recovered their inheritance. He looked

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each brother in the eye as he blessed them individually. When all this was over, the Doctor said he would come back during the day and let Maria know how she could get hold of him if he was needed urgently. The Doctor and nurse left together with Father Fontanari and Maria suggested that perhaps one of her uncles could go to the mercado and buy some food, especially some wine as they were nearly out. She also asked that they buy her a chicken, as she wanted to make some stock for soup.

She was surprised that they all volunteered so readily and even more surprised when they returned home, because along with a couple of bags of shopping, which they dumped unceremoniously onto the kitchen table, they brought enough digging equipment to tunnel to Madrid! They changed clothes and each carried a shovel into the garden. Pedro had sketched a plan, although quite when he had done this she didn’t know. Each brother, so it seemed to Maria, had their own section of garden to search. Martin’s piece of land was adjacent to the front of the house, so when Pacquita came walking by, it was him she saw first.

“Martin, Hijo, why are you digging your father’s garden?”

“It needed doing.”

“It’s needed doing for 20 years. Why now?”

“It’s for Papa.”

“Martin. You haven’t done an honest days work in your whole life. Why are you digging in the garden, Hijo?”

“Oh, Pacquita, please. We’re just doing this for Papa. We’ll tell him you came by, but he’s really not well enough to see you.”

“Has that whore been here?” And with that she spat on the ground narrowly missing Martin’s Wellington boot.

“No, no, she hasn’t and to be true we’re not really expecting her to.”

By now all the brothers had stopped their work and walked over to see what all the fuss was about. Pacquita didn’t believe anything Martin would ever say. What woman would?

But she knew from looking at the five workers that something was up.

“So. All the sons digging in the garden.

Ha! You know the diamond is mine, no?

You let me know when you find it. Ha! Adios caballeros. Ha!” ************************************* Lunchtime came and the boys continued to work through the hot midday sun and Maria made them fresh sandwiches and brought them cold drinks. The Doctor arrived late morning and he was cautiously pleased that Papa seemed a little stronger.

By mid-afternoon, the military operation in the garden was attracting envious looks from the neighbours. It was good of Juan’s boys to do this for their father, they all agreed. They’d even uncovered a water pipe which must have been leaking for ages, so that was repaired. They were wonderful boys!

They toiled in the hot sun all day without success and by early evening the good Doctor and his nurse arrived back again, amazed to see that by this time very nearly the whole garden had been dug up. It looked good and was certainly an improvement.

Had they found anything though? No, they hadn’t and there wasn’t much more to do now. The boys were looking frustrated and very tired. Doctor Eradis and his nurse disappeared upstairs and Maria, who was busy with the cooking in the kitchen, followed a little while afterwards. When she entered her grandfather’s bedroom she couldn’t believe her eyes. Papa was actually sitting up in his old Morrocan dressing gown, the colour had returned to his face and a mischievous little smile danced across

his lips. He beckoned his granddaughter forward to him and whispered, “Is that chicken soup I smell?”

“Yes, yes, Papa Juan, yes. Your favourite!”

“I’d like a little please.”

Maria glanced towards the Doctor who nodded his approval.

“Papa Juan. You scared me so much.”

“I was a little worried too! But I’m not going to die. You can’t get rid of me that easily!”

“I don’t want to Papa. Ever. I love you.”

“And I love you too, Maria. But where’s my chicken soup?”

“Yes, yes, immediately. Is there anything else you want? Grapes maybe? We have plenty.”

“No, no, just a little soup and then I’ll rest.”

Maria literally jumped down the stairs to the kitchen. She decided to leave her uncles to finish their digging while she prepared a bowl of the precious broth for her grandfather and only once he was finished with it did she go outside to tell them. The five boys came towards her as they could see there was an announcement coming.

Francisco started to get emotional because he thought from the look on Maria’s face that the news was bad. Well, there was news, she said. But good news. Papa Juan had made a recovery! They all ran in and took their dirty boots off, making a terrible mess in the process. They washed their hands, struggling for room around the small basin and they went up to see for themselves. They agreed it was a miracle. He had fought his illness and won and they could all see that

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Fiction

although he was far from his usual self, he was indeed much better. The Doctor made it clear that he had a long recuperation to go through before he would regain his full strength and this must not under any circumstances be hurried. It would be easy for Papa to relapse. He told all of them that Papa must be allowed to rest thoroughly. ************************************ Everyone who needed to know was telephoned, especially Father Fontanari and even Pacquita was told the good news. As soon as Papa slipped peacefully back off to sleep, the brothers went to the Old Town to have a good drink, all together at Miguel’s bar. They made their announcement to one and all. That their father would go on for a few more years yet. The beer flowed and they had a great time. Pablo said that he would stay close by for the rest of the week, just in case he was needed and Manolo said that he wouldn’t go back to London for a few days. He’d like to catch up with his old friends from the University, so he too would be around. Maybe he’d fly back at the end of the week. Martin wanted to get to Malaga at the earliest opportunity. He had some investors “teed up” to see in Marbella, at the Club, about a really good deal, although mercifully he stopped short of providing the details. After a few more beers, Pedro amazed everyone by admitting that he was giving serious consideration to moving from the ‘benefits’ offices at the Council to the planning department. What did everyone think? Francisco said he’d have to rest for at least a month as he was absolutely good for nothing now. He’d never before done any physical work and he’d done his ‘stupid’ back in digging that ‘stupid’ garden looking for those ‘stupid’ diamonds. They all laughed.

By the way - the diamonds! They had been forgotten in all the celebration. They all agreed it didn’t matter. What the hell! Let’s have another drink! *********************************** At around midnight Maria went up to check Papa Juan before finally turning in

for the night herself. He opened his eyes and gave her a little smile and she went to his side.

“So, you old fox, you gave me a scare.”

“I’m sorry Maria, you know I...”

“Yes, yes, Papa Juan, of course I know.”

“And where are my sons? My boys?”

“The five of them went off to celebrate at Miguel’s. They will be drinking to your health. They’re probably getting horribly drunk by now! But they are all together and that’s good. No?” “Vultures!”

“Papa Juan!”

“Well!”

“Papa. They had to ask you where you put the diamonds, of course they did. They thought you were going to die! Madre Mia! We all did! You must not blame them and now, Old Man, you must leave a will or at least give clear instructions. I don’t want this happening again. Do you hear?”

“Do you think I would die with you not knowing, Maria?”

“Papa, I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

“Ever since your beautiful mother died, my whole world has been you, Maria. You gave me life again. A life I thought was over.

I would never leave you not knowing.” She nodded, unable to speak now that her tears had returned.

“You hate this old gown of mine, don’t you?”

She smiled, the confidence in her voice now returning.

“Yes, the smelly old thing. I hate it, you know I do Papa. And I will burn it as soon as I can!”

“So you wouldn’t bury me in it then?”

“No, of course not. You know that.”

“You would have found it then, I knew this. Por favour Maria, reach inside the breast pocket.” She did and inside she found an envelope upon which was written her name.

“There’s also a letter to tell you what I wanted done with them and there’s nine diamonds.”

“Nine?”

“Yes. Nine. I didn’t want everyone to know how many I had. But there are nine.

Three I inherited and over the years, the six I bought. Nine.”

“But you lost one with Francisco, no?”

“No. I never told him, but when I helped that son of mine move all his belongings back to Reus, I found some photos. They were… how do you say… compromising. So I went back to see the superintendent father, the bastardo and said I would show these photographs to the newspapers if he didn’t give me my diamond back.”

“Papa! Why didn’t you tell Francisco?”

“I thought he should suffer.”

“Papa! You must tell him at once.”

“It’s in the letter, Maria. But if you prefer I’ll speak to him tomorrow.”

“Gracias, Papa. You must. And I will take these things to the Bank for safekeeping first thing tomorrow morning.”

“As you will Maria, as you will.”

“But I have one question Papa. If you had this in your pocket, what were you pointing at?”

“Pointing?”

“Yes. Pointing! When they asked you the question, you pointed downwards.”

“No, Maria. Not pointing. I tried to lift my fingers up, but I was too weak. I wanted to... you know... give them the fingers... how you say… the ‘V’ sign… tell them to fuck off.”

“Papa, that’s terrible!”

“Well!”

“So when they asked you if you were pointing under the bed you said ‘No’.”

“Well, I wasn’t!”

“But when they asked you if you were pointing at the garden you said ‘Yes’ – why?”

“Well, I might have been dying, but I’m not stupid. That garden’s needed digging for twenty years now and I thought that with five strong boys here it was too good an opportunity to miss. Tell me, Maria, did they do a good job?”

“Yes, Papa, it looks fantastic. And they mended the leaky water pipe!”

“Excellent news for next year, Maria, excellent news. Hasta mañana, Hija.”

“Yes, Papa Juan. Hasta manana.”

Peter, HMP Wandsworth

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English PEN Project

The Chamber

By John Grisham Jeanne Wilding, HMP Low Newton

A

longside The Green Mile, Grisham’s The Chamber stands as one of the strongest arguments against capital punishment ever written.

The anti-hero/protagonist of The Chamber is an unrelenting, unrepentant and vicious white redneck in the USA’s Deep South (played by Gene Hackman in the film), who murders two sweet and beautiful 11 year old black girls.

There is nothing to like or sympathise with in this man, as his estranged nephew, a trainee barrister, quickly finds. With his uncle facing the death sentence, his nephew is charged with arguing against execution.

The Chamber, as its title suggests, is about death row and the horrors of execution. As the story unfolds, any reader with an ounce of liberalism or humanity can’t fail to support the nephew in his struggle, albeit reluctantly.

As in The Green Mile, the reader, as well as many of those working on death row, witness the state barbarism of gassing, electrocution and hanging, and in the end is more revolted by these old and calculated killings than the original crime, horrific as

it is or appears to be.

As the final day draws near, we find ourselves desperately rooting for the trainee lawyer and feeling some sympathy for the killer. Here was a man who had committed the most heinous crime, and yet, and yet...

I’m not easily inclined to extend my sympathy to rapists and child killers. ‘Let them rot’ comes to mind, but as I faced the horrors of execution and what it says about those who consent and pay for others to commit the deed in our name, I found execution unbearable. We can perhaps forgive the killer who commits murder in blind rage or ignorance, socially reinforced prejudice or whilst under the influence. But can we really tolerate our state employees calmly and coldly chopping off a human head, frying a human brain, hanging someone until they choke after they’ve endured years awaiting the day on death row?

Grisham, a lawyer himself, has a tense, unsentimental, economical and un-frilly style, and uses no emotion or polemic to persuade. There is no pulling of heartstrings, no flowers or violins and a

complete absence of maudlin sentiment.

His characterisation of John Redneck does nothing to capture your sympathy.

Even leaving aside that the majority of death row inhabitants are poor and black and some inevitably are innocent, I came to the view that such barbarism was intolerable and have opposed capital punishment strenuously ever since.

Not Shut Up Shout Out We are always looking to publish reviews, be they of books, films, plays or any other artistic or cultural activities.

Essays, opinion pieces and any sort of creative criticism also warmly welcome!

BCM NOT SHUT UP PO BOX 12 London WC1N 3XX Or Freepost RRXA-AHGR-ZCZL

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Book review

The RaggedTrousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell

David Tattum, HMP Usk

R

eaders will often say a book was good, was enjoyable.

Occasionally, they may say a work was amazing, had a deep and lasting impact. Such is Robert Tressell’s “The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists”.

This draws on Tressell’s time in Hastings, where he lived and worked as a painter between 1902 and his death in 1911, and offers a coruscating attack on untrammelled capitalism.

Following the lives of a group of workers, the ‘philanthropists’ of the title, and their employers in the decorating trade and undertaking business, the action takes place over the course of a year in the fictional town of Mugsborough. The novel clearly exposes the greed, trickery and duplicity of both groups, of the workers in the dog-eatdog world of low wages, hard work and uncertain employment and particularly of the bosses in their search for higher profits.

It also offers a challenging and poignant exposé of the social conditions resulting from the system. The wealthy, flagrantly affluent lifestyle of the employers is in stark juxtaposition to the almost continual grinding poverty of working class families.

There the struggle to pay rent on shoddy accommodation, feed families with tainted, poor quality food and the pathetic struggle of daily life is captured in heart-rending detail and engenders a wealth of emotional responses in the reader: horror, pity and anger being a few.

Do not think, however, that this is simply a catalogue of unrelieved doom and gloom.

Tressell was too good a writer for that.

Flashes of humour are seen in the daily life of the workers and he skilfully draws the reader into the life of his workers: Frank Owen, a socialist, atheist and skilled craftsman, with a sickly wife and young child; the Eastons, a young couple with a young baby; the mysterious Barrington, Philpot and others. We care for them; we share with them their small triumphs, their hopes and their pain.

Written during the Edwardian period with its labour unrest, this is an angry novel, bitter about the perceived iniquities of the system. Tressell’s naming of the employers and the local worthies – Pushem, Sloggem, Smeeriton, Leavit, Doemdown and Rushton – indicates his attitude towards the corruption and

hypocrisy of the system. His attack on the morality of organised religion and the Christianity of the bosses is scathing.

This book, read many years ago, drove home the glaring economic inequalities and the lack of opportunity that result from an unregulated market and the enervating impact poverty and uncertainty have on the many for the enrichment of the few. It confirmed a belief that there has to be a better way, a fairer scheme of things.

That message still resonates today. At a time of rampant venality among bankers, company directors and politicians, together with the sustained attack on the welfare state and the demonisation of the poor, this work is required reading. Do we really want to turn the clocks back a hundred years?

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A

wave of nausea hits me about ten seconds after I wake up. The dim light allows me to estimate it’s early morning, as I struggle to sit upright on my sofa. I search the floor for something to vomit into, knocking over a load of empty cans in the process. I manage to grab a carrier bag and there’s just enough time for me to lean forward and repeatedly heave into it. Last night, the same bag contained twenty fags and ten cans of Superturbo cider. Now it contains a sickly mixture of yellow bile and phlegm.

Jesus, I need a drink!

I wipe the sweat, tears and snot from my face onto the sleeve of my hoody. I must have passed out fully clothed and wet myself yet again. I stumble to my feet and turn on the light. Relief surges through me as I spot two unopened cans on my coffee table. I throw my sick bag into the bin and notice I’m shaking badly. I’m feeling dizzy and unbalanced and have to lean against the wall to remove my jeans and boxers.

I flip over the wet sofa cushions and sit back down. I grab a can and crack it open, drinking as much as possible with the vigour only an active alcoholic can muster.

I fight the urge to heave again by taking deep breaths, but manage to keep the contents down. Rummaging around for my smokes, I find I only have three left. I spark up and finish my can. The alcohol quickly fends off my demons as I try to recall last night’s events.

I check my knuckles for cuts and bruises – no sign of violence, thankfully. I reach for my phone and to my utter dismay find I’ve been drink dialling. It’s now 7.47am but at 12.01am I’d attempted to call my ex. Luckily the conversation time registers 0.00 seconds, but then at 2.23am I’d sent her the most obnoxious, rude and frightening text I’ve ever sent to anybody ever. I must have been in total blackout because I cannot remember calling or texting her at all. I open the remaining can, downing it in one, safe in the knowledge that the shop will be serving soon. As I re-read the horror

In my imagination text the alcohol kicks in and my arrogance makes its first appearance of the day. Dark thoughts invade my mind – “She’s a bitch!

Made your life miserable, spiteful cow, detest her anyway!” I cast the phone aside and stub out my fag. Time for the shop!

I stagger into my bedroom and hunt for some clean-ish jeans. Fresh boxers elude me, so I don’t bother wearing any. Neither do I change my socks or hoody, with its damp waist. Personal hygiene is not on the agenda. I pull on a pair of combats, lace my trainers, grab my jacket, keys and I’m out the door. There’s the reassuring feeling of a twenty pound note in my pocket as I wobble down the road desperately trying to focus on walking in a straight line. Inevitably, there’s a long queue in the shop, people on their way to work buying croissants and sandwiches, locals getting milk and newspapers. And then there’s me, four cans of Turbo under each arm,

sweating profusely, nervously shuffling from one foot to another. The ciders seem to weigh a ton and are getting heavier by the second. I curse under my breath – the idiot at the front of the queue paying on his card and taking ages, the twat.

Eventually, I get back home, drenched in sweat, restocked with booze and fags.

My flat is a disgusting tip, but I just flop down on the sofa cracking open my third sherbert. I switch on the telly and watch the news. My can goes down like a treat and I’m soon into my fourth, chain smoking and looking forward to Jeremy Kyle – in a hypocritical way, his guests make me feel better about myself. Suddenly, my phone bursts into life, making me jump.

It’s a text from my ex. I drain my drink and crack another, gulping down the contents in less than thirty seconds. I light a fag and open my text; it reads: YOU POOR MAN – PLEASE GET SOME HELP, YOU’RE A CHRONIC ALCOHOLIC AND OBVIOUSLY EXTREMELY ILL. GO BACK TO AA. GET A JOB. DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING! – BUT STAY OUT OF OUR LIVES PLEASE! I’M CHANGING THIS NUMBER. I open another Turbo laughing to myself despite the lump forming in my throat and the blurred vision as my tears well up. She might think I’m sick and alcoholdependent, but in my imagination it’s all her fault anyway. I take a long drag from my ciggy, swig from my can. Then I start to cry.

Ralph Anderson, HMP Winchester

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AnArcHY by José Orozco

The old creepy house One of them acted as lookout while the other two approached the old creepy house.

Dirty smoke rose from its chimney, like an omen. When they heard the cough they rushed to hide. The glass in the window was broken and they could smell something rotten coming from the inside.

They heard the cough again and a strange tapping sound.

They crept around the back of the house and found the door open.

One of them pushed the other inside and said, “Go on! I’ll follow you!”

It was dark and smelly and at first they could see little. Then they could make out that they were stepping on an animal skin

rug. Looking up, they noticed the head of a tiger with big scary teeth and eyes on fire.

One of them started to shout, but the other boy covered his mouth to silence him.

Now they could see animals all around the room: black fur, glowing eyes, horns, teeth, giant ears.

Suddenly, they heard the tapping noise behind them. They looked back and saw the old man with his walking stick looking straight at them.

“What are you doing here?” he asked calmly.

The kids screamed and ran out as fast as possible. One of them dropped his mobile.

The next day they came back to the

house and knocked on the door. The old man stood there, coughing. He smiled and said, “Did you forget something? Come in, come in.”

He talked to them about the animals he had collected from all over the world.

He showed them creatures they had never imagined existed.

A few weeks later, there was an ambulance outside the house. They never saw the old man again. New people moved in. The window was fixed. The smell gone.

The mystery evaporated.

HB, HMYOI Warren Hill

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Poetry

Focus Again, I strike without grace or poise in has crept a torturous noise.

I’m beyond the point of no return cursing thoughts, behind a look so stern.

I fantasise about letting go to obliterate and destroy my show.

What keeps me back is a wavering strength among wide eyes without intent.

I stand so tall, with a twisted face and cast aspersions towards my own disgrace.

Have I fooled the crowd and averted blame of my own demise and walk of shame.

It’s here, I’m faced with just reward like a battling gladiator without his sword.

I beg and plead for one more chance or have I missed my merry song and dance?

Neil Wynne, HMP Kirkham

Looking At Four Walls I am looking at four walls Am I alive?

Then I wake up, thank god!

Am I alive?

I miss my wife I will go home one day Will I still be alive?

I am looking at four walls thank god!

Seval Fehim, HMP Pentonville

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Got the 9 O’Clock News Obama’s planning got Bernard Manning, 35 years is a bit of a drag, sentenced as a traitorous hag, not taking news alerts any further, this cold blooded murder making a killing, Iraqi civilians live streaming!

Royalty gorge a silver spoon George, photographic informal, trying to con us they’re normal, as the blueblood cries the latest conspiracy obsession of Di. Really quite rich, she’s Sloane Ranger kitsch!

For handouts we fake and we fib, while Bale is bought for £85 million quid, better find a hame, before next year’s Commonwealth games no longer fed, you’ll be charged if you beg, we want our streets clean all the way to Aberdeen!

Guardian parade insists on having his say, really turned sour, his boyfriend locked up for 9 hours.

Civil liberty stress in our illusionary free press, wanting justice and fair play, look out, here comes Teresa May! Watching news – 3D chill graphic pictures of victims of chemical kill.

So much for the Arab Spring Egypt’s military junta has a familiar ring.

A bit of a blue smuggling drugs from Peru, who is to blame when you’re packing cocaine?

We really do care, get off on other people’s despair, the human condition glorifies in fellow men’s demolition.

Feeling groovy, One Direction’s now a movie, forget all the broken, we cheer Andy at the Open.

Violence, fatigue, don’t you worry – just tune into the New Corrie!

House a bit grotty, invest in the post code lottery!

Bit of a pain, a few days’ rain, line up, line up, here comes a fun day!

Sunny Bank Holiday Monday leisure curfew, foster good call barbecue!

Colin Robertson, HMP Unknown

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Freeflow Arts

José Orozco Exhibition

at Garden Court Chambers, London Freeflow Arts, curated by Matthew Meadows, September 2013-January 2014

T

wo years ago, José Orozco started a custodial sentence in one of London’s Victorian prisons. He spent all his time inside painting pictures, both as a regular member of the education department’s art class and on his own; art tutors gave him paint and brushes to take back to his cell.

Most prison artists who discover a creative vocation in these unlikely circumstances have no formal art training. This is not the case with José; after completing a degree in Photography and Digital Imaging, he had worked as a photojournalist and video editor for 10 years before being sentenced in 2012.

Visually literate, and equipped with a contemporary set of image-making and story-telling skills, he has had to learn a very different medium of expression – the slow flow of paint instead of film.

From this unexpected process a more

personal artist has emerged, and over a short but accelerated period of activity he has produced more than enough work to warrant a wider audience.

José assembles compositions with his photographer’s eye, using saturated colour and tonal contrasts in bold figure and landscape compositions. Inexperience with a new medium gives his developing skills a poignant and attractive character.

He paints with acrylics on prison cloth stretched over bits of board. When they’re finished, he rolls them up and sends them out to his daughter, re-using the boards for another picture. Do his pictures reflect his current circumstances? Some might suggest a reference, but he’s not a member of the gritty realism school of prison art.

Instead he prefers a form of escapist drama, creating cinematic compositions with the help of his framing and editing skills.

Photographs help him in much of his work, though he is not so interested in the

work of other artists. He is simply absorbed by the experience that painting brings him: “It has given me the tools and freedom to express the feelings, conflicts and desires which arise in the confined spaces of a prison, and which grow with furore in my 12’ x 7’ cell. From all this I have learned that one’s freedom can be taken away overnight by the state. But I have learned that my mind is still free, thank god for that!”

Shortly before his exhibition opened last September, José was unexpectedly transferred to a Suffolk training prison where he continues to paint. Though unable to attend the opening reception, several members of his family came to admire his work. The exhibition has given him increased confidence, and some income, as his paintings have began to sell!

Matthew Meadows, Art Editor

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FREE MIND, By José Orozco, acrylic

SuBDuE, By José Orozco, acrylic

THE BIRD HAS FLOWN, By José Orozco, acrylic

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10th Anniversary Special

10 is the magic number!

Not Shut Up is sharing its tenth birthday with a number of other organisations helping promote the culture of communication and understanding among the unfree around the UK. As well as Prisoners’ Penfriends (page 4), check out these amazing initatives – here is to many more decades of creative activity to come!

RADIO WANNO 10 years on the air

ordinary social cues.

“Radio Wanno has educated me in computer and studio skills, it’s given me confidence to speak in front of others, but most importantly it has given me a way out of crime, a chance to try and make a career out of media.” (NCFE Graduate) Just under half of all prisoners have been expelled or permanently excluded from school and sixty percent of those in prison with no qualifications are being re-convicted within a year of leaving prison compared with 45% of those with qualifications. Research has shown a

need for a communication tool providing awareness to prisoners about access and opportunities in education and training in prison, in addition to an opportunity to provide a set of learner’s qualifications and transformational life skills through a media project.

Although managed by radio and teaching professionals, it is unique because the output is made by prisoners with prisoners for prisoners. Their emphasis is on a ‘real work’ experience - in the classroom prisoners study for radio production, literacy, employability qualifications as well as gaining transferable skills in ICT, team-working, communication, self esteem, analytical thinking and working to a deadline.

Radio Wanno also provide some programme content to The National Prison Radio service managed for the National Offender Management Service by the prison education charity The Prison Radio Association.

Radio Wanno is the multi-award winning prison media and literacy project based in HMP Wandsworth, which is the largest prison in Western Europe, a B Cat local serving London courts and as a prison it mirrors the male prison population demographic in the UK. Information for prisoners can often be lost or misinterpreted especially when you understand that 48% of all prisoners are at, or below, the reading level expected of an 11 year old, and dyslexia is three to four times more common amongst prisoners.

Many prisoners have learning difficulties that interfere with their “When I was remanded, I gave up on my filmmaking ability to cope and create difficulty career, but that changed when I signed up for the Radio in communicating, expressing Wanno course.” (Simon Melbourne) themselves and understanding

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The F Word –10 years of helping foster understanding and peace The Forgiveness Project is a UK based charity that uses storytelling to explore how ideas around forgiveness, reconciliation and conflict resolution can be used to impact positively on people’s lives, through the personal testimonies of both victims and perpetrators of crime and violence.

Central to the work is their commitment to work with ex-offenders and victims of crime as a way of modelling a restorative process. They achieve this through: • Collecting & sharing real stories of forgiveness and reconciliation to help individuals transform the pain and conflict in their own lives.

• Running a restorative justice programme in prisons, helping build community resilience by working with victims to rehabilitate offenders.

• Creating resources for schools to educate young people about peaceful solutions to conflict.

• Providing tools for resolving hurt and conflict by holding events and running training programmes.

The F Word: Images of Forgiveness

Conversations on Forgiveness: 10 at 10 “From all the work done over the last decade, we know that forgiveness affects everyone from all walks of life. Whilst many of the real-life stories we feature tackle extreme crime and violence, we all face everyday issues of forgiveness all the time. So as we mark our 10th anniversary, we are holding a series of ten thought-provoking dialogues around the issue of forgiveness at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London. Each of the ‘Conversations on Forgiveness’ will feature speakers with contrasting views to explore different aspects of forgiveness, from the impact of betrayal within families to how different faith groups approach the topic.”

The exhibition is a thought provoking collection of arresting images and personal narratives exploring forgiveness in the face of atrocity. First launched in London in 2004, it has since been displayed in over 300 venues worldwide. Drawing together voices from South Africa, America, Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland and England, the exhibition examines forgiveness as a healing process, a journey out of victimhood and, ultimately, a journey of hope. The exhibition is available for hire or is on permanent display in various countries around the world.

For all general queries email: office@theforgivenessproject.com.

Find out more by visiting www. theforgivenessproject.com

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Past Arts

Another Side of SylviA PAnkhurSt Lucy Edkins is a London based artist, who works in a variety of media; her work is regularly exhibited, published, commissioned, screened & performed.

Her profile was featured in “Insider Art”, Matthew Meadows’ 2010 book on prison arts. She recently visited Tate Britain to review for us the exhibition featuring Sylvia Pankhurst, an artist and activist who did much to champion the cause of the unfree and the excluded in British society a hundred years ago. We will feature more on Sylvia Pankhurst’s amazing life and work in future issues, but for now the words of someone who, like Pankhurst, had seen the inside of Holloway prison for herself.

I

f you hear the name Sylvia Pankhurst, you might think of suffragettes, activists, women who were imprisoned fighting for their right to vote. Stepping into the room at the Tate Britain dedicated to an exhibition of her work you will see another side of Pankhurst: beautifully executed gouache and charcoal portraits painted and drawn in situ during her 1907 tour of northern and Scottish towns, focussing particularly on working women and the harsh conditions they toiled under.

It is likely that these few months she spent painting factory workers helped to politicise Pankhurst.

Her sensitive yet unsentimental portrayals of women working in cotton mills and potteries often captured a beautiful light falling on her subjects from tall Victorian windows. Her detailed observations open a window for us into

ArTWork By SILvIA PAnkHurST

another era.

We read of how Pankhurst drew the attention of a wider public to her findings by writing magazine articles on the condition of working women. She highlighted the unequal treatment of women, who were given the more menial tasks, often making them subservient to male workers, and whose wages would be as little as a quarter of a man’s for the same job. She also commented on the priority the bosses gave to commercial interests over the health of their employees, continuing, for example, the use of lead in pottery glazes. Pankhurst herself fainted on more than one occasion due to the oppressive heat the women worked under and the toxic substances they were exposed to.

We also see the designs Pankhurst made for the the Women’s Social and Political Union Pankhurst founded along with her mother and sister and other Mancunian activists in a split from the non-militant National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies – from the well known Angel of Freedom to the banners, membership cards, the illuminated scrolls and intricately wrought portcullis brooches given to WSPU members who had been incarcerated at Holloway for their political actions (perhaps not such a bad idea even now – to reward us for enduring a term in prison with a certificate in recognition of what we have tolerated in order to be

allowed to regain a place in our society!).

Pankhurst was arrested eight times with other WSPU members in 1913 for acts of militancy, including throwing a lump of concrete at a Parliament painting of ‘Speaker Finch being held in the chair’, recognising it as a symbol of an exclusive society. Pankhurst was also artful at evading arrest, once donning a disguise to evade 300 mounted police sent out specifically to arrest her and then going on to give speeches and attend demonstrations which in their turn changed the course of British history.

Any incarcerated artist would appreciate the meticulous attention to detail in Pankhurst’s written and visualised observations of her stay in Holloway. In such a limited setting, every small detail becomes a fascination.

In an illustrated magazine article she subsequently wrote, she strove to draw attention to the unnecessarily harsh conditions and ridiculous regulations by which the prisoners were bound.

Pankhurst called for penal reform but, although many improvements have since been made, many aspects of her experience of incarceration will still ring true to people who are kept in secure institutions today.

Lucy EdkInS, ex-unfree artist

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Creative Reading

Bluebird

there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you. there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he’s in there. there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody’s asleep.

I say, I know that you’re there, so don’t be sad. then I put him back, but he’s singing a little in there, I haven’t quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it’s nice enough to make a man weep, but I don’t weep, do you?

Charles Bukowski

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Poetry

About bukowski’s bluebird

by a low Newton reading Group

At Not Shut Up, we not only champion the cause of creative writing – we also know creative reading is an essential process, and a great joy, especially when shared with others.

The Reader Organisation is an award-winning charitable social enterprise working to connect people through great literature. In weekly sessions, a practitioner reads aloud a short story or extract and a poem. Anyone in the group may choose to read too: some do, others don’t. In this way, connections are made with thoughts and feelings; some people reflect on these privately, others are more vocal. Either is fine. The emphasis is on enjoying the literature.

At HMP Low Newton, Charlie Darby-Villis facilitates several groups across the prison. Below, Julie Nadin, a group member, reflects on reading a poem together.

W

e meet every Wednesday morning in the library where we read aloud books and poems and discuss them.

Our group is made up of all ages, from 20s to 50s, which makes our discussions on what we have read interesting. Recently, we read the Bluebird

by Charles Bukowski, and here are some of our thoughts on it.

Francesca who read the poem said it was wonderful to read, it gave her an emotional response, it almost made her shake. For her it was more about the richness of the language, not so much what it meant, “feelings not intellect” were her thoughts.

Cara wondered whether writers are supposed to be moody and depressed, so the happy bluebird would make him look like a fraud after writing about such dark emotions, showing only his tough and troubled persona to the world. In prison,

even as women we have to act tough, push down our feelings, stay numb.

Hannah thought he felt anger and frustration when inspiration appeared at the wrong time, suggesting that some parts of our culture, especially in certain areas, see writing poetry as a negative. But he is keeping his bluebird alive to write.

As Ann listened, the poem touched her heart. That private, soft, loving part of her can be described as a singing bird, too fragile to be shared with the world. She shared with us her rugby-playing son’s love of writing poetry, how, when tidying his room, she has caught glimpses of beautifully illustrated ones. Rarely though is he brave enough to share a poem with anyone.

I suggested that we are all born with a bluebird in our heart. Look at children at play, the love, the smiles, giggles and laughter show the bluebird’s merry song.

But as we grow older and the world around us gets harsher, we build a cage around it, only letting it out to sing occasionally.

We all agreed that especially in prison our bluebirds are locked inside, only to be brought out when we are alone, then our guard comes down and our very own bluebird escapes from its cage. He may be happy or feeling blue, but still he sings for us and we are somehow free. And just maybe on Wednesday mornings, when we gather to read together, we show each other a little peek of our sweet bluebirds.

Just recently, I was looking at the facilities list and, as I am on enhanced status, I am allowed a bird in a cage, but I think one bluebird in a cage is enough for me.

Julie Nadin and the Wednesday morning Reader group, HMP Low Newton

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Useful Info

Art organisations worth knowing about Here is a list of organisations working all across the UK with those who are or have been in custody – if there is anyone we have missed out, let us know!

ArTs AlliAnce is a coalition of artists, arts and Criminal Justice Sector organisations and individuals who work with prisoners, those on probation and ex-offenders in the community, promoting the power of the arts in transforming lives.

Arts Alliance, 59 Carter Lane, London EC4V

Prisoners’ Penfriends was formed to build on the prisoner-penpal scheme created by the Prison Reform Trust. It is approved by the Prison Service and provides a confidential forwarding service, with guidelines, training and advice.

Penfriends, PO box 33460, London SW18 5YB

cleAn breAk is a theatre company with an independent education programme, which uses theatre for personal and political change, working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system.

Clean Break, 2 Patshull Road, London NW5 2LB

The Prison ArTs foundATion aims to release the creative self of all prisoners, ex-prisoners, young offenders and ex-young offenders in Northern Ireland using all of the arts and crafts including writing, drama, fine art, craft, music and dance.

Prison Arts Foundation, Unit 3 Clanmil Arts & Business Centre, Northern Whig Building, 2-10 Bridge Street, Belfast BT1 1LU

fine cell Work is a Registered Charity that teaches needlework to prison inmates and sells their products. The prisoners do the work when they are locked in their cells, and the earnings give them hope, skills and independence.

Fine Cell Work, 38 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0RE inside Job ProducTions is a unique new non-profit multi-media production company which works with women prisoners to produce highly professional video, print and multimedia products with a social purpose Inside Job Productions, 16 Hoxton Square, London N1 6NT koesTler TrusT are the UK’s best-known prison arts charity. They have been awarding, exhibiting and selling artworks by offenders, detainees and secure patients for 47 years.

Koestler Arts Centre, 168a Du Cane Road, London W12 0TX

The Prison rAdio AssociATion is an award winning education charity that provides support, guidance and expertise to existing prison radio stations and advises prisons interested in setting up radio stations and radio training facilities.

Prison Radio Association, HMP Brixton, Jebb Avenue, London SW2 5XF The reAder orgAnisATion shared reading groups contribute to long-term, sustainable changes to prison reform, offender rehabilitation and offender prevention.

They meet NOMS targets through its seven pathways to reduce re-offending.

The Reader Organisation, The Friary Centre, Bute Street, Liverpool L5 3LA sTorybook dAds is a registered charity based in Dartmoor Prison. Their aim is to maintain family ties and facilitate learning for prisoners and their children through the provision of story CDs. Storybook Dads, HMP Dartmoor, Princetown, Yelverton, Devon PL20 6RR

NOT SHUT UP Equalities and Inclusion Policy NOT SHUT UP encourages and supports anyone who has experienced incarceration and wants to express their creativity through literature and other forms of art. We understand that “difference” and “otherness” is a daily reality for those behind bars and we are committed to addressing issues of prejudice and discrimination in relation to gender and gender identity, sexual preference, disability, partnership status, race, nationality, ethnic origin, political or religious faith, age or socio-economic class of individuals and groups.

NOT SHUT UP is an artist-led organisation – those involved in it have often had direct experience of prisons and understand the range of challenges and inequalities faced by those we work with: reduced access to education and the arts, high levels of psychoemotional illness and low levels of physical fitness and well-being, social and cultural exclusion and others. We see the arts as essential in helping both artists and audiences understand and celebrate the notion of a thriving, diverse and modern society.

NOT SHUT UP keeps its policies and procedures under continual stakeholder review in order to ensure that the realities of discrimination, exclusion, oppression and alienation that may be an aspect of previous experience of its partners, as well as project participants, are addressed appropriately.

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Managing Editor: Marek Kazmierski Poetry Editor: Anna Robinson Art Editor: Matthew Meadows Creative Director: Phil Tristram Online Editor: Piers Barber Thanks to our Trustees: Kate Pullinger (Chair) Jane Wynn (Treasurer) Timothy Firmston Simon Kirwin Sarah Leipciger Sarah Mansell Simon Miles Annette Prandzioch Raphael Rowe Ella Simpson

NOT SHUT UP generates no income of its own and is produced solely through the generosity of Arts Council England and our patrons, which include: 29 May 1961 Trust Anton Jurgens Charitable Trust Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society Batty Trust Bonus Trust City & Metropolitan Welfare Fund Coutts Charitable Trust David Hammond Charitable Foundation Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Trust English PEN Esmée Fairbairn Foundation Foyle Foundation Garden Court Garfield Weston Foundation Garrick Charitable Trust Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation

Jessie Spencer Trust J Paul Getty Jr. Charitable Trust Goldsmiths’ Company Lady Hind Trust Lankelly Chase Foundation Leigh Trust Mercer’s Company Michael Varah Memorial Fund Norda Trust Rathbones Royal London Society Sir James Roll Charitable Trust Swan Mountain Trust Topinambour Trust Tudor Trust W.F. Southall Trust

Not Shut Up is a registered charity (Charity No. 1090610) and a company limited by guarantee (registered in London No. 4260355).

Subscriptions

Anyone interested in submitting work, volunteering or working as part of the Not Shut Up Academy, which works with in- and post- custody artists on developing their creative entrepreneurial skills, is invited to write in to us at the address below or contact us via our website.

Establishment Annual Subscription: ten copies four times a year, p&p included, for just £50.00.

BCM NOT SHUT UP PO Box 12 London WC1N 3XX Or Freepost RRXA-AHGR-ZCZL

Individual Annual Subscription: one copy four times a year, p&p included, for just £15.00.

Cut out and send the coupon to BCM NOT SHUT UP PO Box 12 London WC1N 3XX

Please send me one / ten copies four times a year.

I enclose a cheque / postal order for £15 / £50 Name Address Email contact

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The Burnbake Trust

L

ast issue, as we do each year for their annual prison arts award exhibition on London’s Southbank, we celebrated the work of the Koestler Trust. Arthur Koestler would have been amazed; recent years have seen the charity he founded in 1962 become the biggest prison arts charity in the UK, expanding its activities in many ways. As well as the Southbank Centre exhibition, there are now several others across the country. Further initiatives promote its message of the transformative value of creativity to offenders: a mentoring scheme for just-released prisoners, a collaboration with the British Council at last year’s Venice Biennale, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation as part of wider lobbying to influence government prison policy led by the Arts Alliance.

This issue we once again celebrate the work of the Burnbake Trust. Much less well known and working on a far more modest scale, it was founded in 1968 by local Wiltshire business woman Jean Davis. She had been inspired on a visit to HMP Grendon, where art was an integral part of this recently opened prison’s experimental therapeutic regime. She started the Burnbake Trust to support prison artists with materials, mounting, selling exhibitions of their work and helping

Not Shut Up

resettlement for locally released prisoners.

The Trust was registered as a charity in 1975 and now, in addition to the work it does with prison artists, has diversified and helps disadvantaged local people by supplying them with low-cost furniture and household goods donated by the public. Income generated now helps support the prison art project.

Those of you who have received the Burnbake Trust’s art materials grant will know its co-ordinator Eva Hogendoom,

who keeps in touch with hundreds of prison artists across the country. She encourages them to submit art work which is exhibited both on the Burnbake Trust’s website and in a number of small exhibitions held annually.

Often it is sold, and any surplus money after deduction of expenses is credited to the artist, enabling them to purchase more art materials to continue with their art work.

As art provision is cut back in prisons across the country, the work of the Burnbake Trust is crucial for many artists inside.

Shout Out

As usual, we’ve featured a range of different art in this issue. Less usually perhaps, several of the featured artists make art about social issues - from a moral standpoint. This is certainly true of Stephen Peterson, Jeremy Deller, Sylvia Pankhurst, Lucy Edkins and Eve McDougall. Can art change the world, or how you act and think? These five seem to believe it can.

Richard Hamilton - one of the UK’s greatest artists - died last year. He made much of his most powerful art addressing social and political injustice. If you don’t know his work, this year’s retrospective

exhibition at the Tate Modern Art Gallery should attract plenty of TV coverage. Could you make art about what makes you angry? Either in your own life inside, or about wider social and political issues. If you think you can or already do, we’d like to know. Send your work to us and we’ll feature it! Finally, two of our reviewers – Lucy Edkins and Eve MacDougall – are ex-prisoners. They are now both artists and writers in their own right. Can you follow in their footsteps and write about art, your own or other people’s?

Matthew Meadows, Art Editor

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burnbake trust: Featured Artist

AbstrAct by Abdullah Abdi

Abdullah Abdi has been in and out of prison since 2005. He first contacted the Burnbake Trust during his first spell inside at Wormwood Scrubs. He has been in regular touch with Eva since then, selling his work either at exhibitions or from the Burnbake Trust website.

He says her encouragement has helped shape and focus his artistic output, and is currently a regular attendee at art classes in HMP Wandsworth, though due shortly for release. He developed his cubist house style whilst studying Picasso, though likes his other styles too, and hopes to continue painting on the out.

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Not Shut up, by Eve McDougall

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