NOT SHUT UP #28

not shut

up Issue 28 Spring 2015

ÂŁ3.50 Distributed

free of charge to secure establishments and care teams around the UK

Roddy doyle inteRview english pen competition how pablo escobaR saved my life book binding in pRisons chaRlie hebdo election special RepResenting pRisons, mental health facilities, detention centRes and otheR secuRe settings NSUP28 P01 Cover .indd 1

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Creative differences making their mark

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his issue’s art content ranges more widely than usual, and not all represented artists have had experience of incarceration.

Most though have felt excluded from the mainstream art world in one way or another, and our gallery section showcases two of these artists: Nigel Kingsbury and Manuel Lanca Bonifacio. Learning disabilities have prevented both from making wonderful art, exhibiting award-winning work through their participation in the Outside In programme. This programme includes several artists either still in prison or released, and you can read about its fantastic work in our Arts Feature. Nigel and Manuel’s work will be exhibited shortly as part of Not Shut Up’s Freeflow Arts exhibition programme at Garden Court Chambers, Central London, organised jointly with Outside In. The opening reception will take place on Wednesday, June 17th.

But we don’t ignore the mainstream artworld altogether; read Lucy Edkins’ always excellent Arts Roundup for reviews of some current exhibitions. These include film and video art as well as the recent Marlene Dumas retrospective at London’s Tate Modern.

Tree oF LIFe, by Julio osorio

Create is an arts charity which puts artists into schools and other social settings, including prisons. Co-founder Nicky Goulder talks us through one such project, describing their ethos of ‘diffiability’ - celebrating the inclusion of differening abilities. I’m a biased fan of what they do, having devised and delivered several art projects for Create over recent years.

Two years ago Freeflow Arts mounted a succesful exhibition of paintings by Columbian artist Julio Osorio at Garden Court Chambers. Because Julio was then serving a custodial sentence his establishment governor wouldn’t allow the use of his real name – his moniker was José

Orozco. Julio was released a while ago now, and is busy painting and promoting himself.

He has a one man exhibition this summer (11th June to 5th July) at Fox Court, 14 Gray’s Inn Road, Chancery Lane, London WC1X 8HN. Finally, on a more sombre note, our managing editor takes a broad view of the Charlie Hebdo affair, which demonstrated - tragically – the sometimes lethal power of art.

Which reminds me – we’re still looking for a cartoonist… ( as well as art of any other kind! ).

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 their awards 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 Freeflow Arts exhibitions at Garden Court Chambers as a means of finding wider audiences for the masses of locked-up talent in the UK – and unlocking it. I work as an artist too, doing lots of drawing and printing strange political wallpaper...

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Art and writing of the unfree

What is inside?

2 Introduction, Matthew Meadows, Art Editor 3 Introduction, Marek Kazmierski, Managing Editor 4 Roddy Doyle, interview

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his spring’s edition of Not Shut Up is devoted to differences – differences of ability, differences of opinion, different states of being. We have just experienced a national General Election, and whatever you think of the outcome, there is certainly a spirit of change sweeping the nation.

Scotland is changing, Britain is changing, even Europe is going through all kinds of turmoil – yet there is no new debate on drug policy, privatisation of services and usefulness of creativity in all areas of our lives.

Not Shut Up is about to enter into partnership with University of East London to fill the gaps left behind by constantly reduced arts and educational provision across the estate, to offer a correspondence course in Creative and Professional Writing (page 31). We live in an age of information, and whatever the stats are about literacy problems in our society, you can never have too much reading and writing in your lives.

We also hear from many other charities working in the sector – English PEN, Working Chance, Create, Outside In, Safe Ground – the work they do with the imprisoned, the abused, the disabled and the excluded is amazing.

As ever, we are always keen to hear from artists working behind bars, from those working in the system, even family and friends. Keeping the flame of creativity going is a collective effort, whatever the political climate!

Marek Kazmierski / Managing Editor

Marek escaped communist Poland as a child and settled in the UK. He is a former English teacher, creative writing tutor and most recently Head of Diversity at HMP Feltham.

Marek is also a writer, translator, publisher and visual artist. When not at his computer typing, he keeps sane riding very old, very loud motorcycles.

8 Roddy Doyle, Dead Man Talking 10 The Runner by Chris Wilson 12 Poetry Workout, Anna Robinson, Poetry Editor 13 Poetry 16 Working Chance, a feature 17 Charlie Hebdo, opinion 18 English PEN Anthology 20 Danny Cassidy, life writing 22 English PEN Anthology 24 Outside In Arts Project 27 Outside In Arts, feature gallery 31 NSUP Correspondence Course 32 Dyslexia and Creativity 33 David Rickerby, Bloody Fields – fiction 35 Cliff Hughes, opinion 36 Safe Ground, HOME Project 40 Reaside Poetry 42 Arts Roundup, by Lucy Edkins 45 Eve McDougall, opinion 46 Adam Mac, fiction 50 English PEN Anthology 52 Art organisations worth knowing about 53 About Not Shut Up 54 Create & Diffabilities

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 writers on developing their professional skills, is invited to write in to us or contact us via our website.

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Not Shut Up Interview

Interview

ARE YOU RODDY DOYLE? AND SO WHAT? Earlier this year, the amazing Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize winning author of such classics as The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, went in to HMP Brixton to chat to the prisoners and be recorded for National Prison Radio. Following the meeting, Not Shut Up got a chance to sit down with the writer and ask him some questions.

MaRek kazMieRski: Thank you very much for coming all this way to meet with prisoners and with our magazine. I recently met Russell Brand in a London jail, and we also interviewed Martina Cole, featured on our last cover, an amazingly generous writer. Now I’m meeting you, I realise everyone I’ve spoken to about this interview, all my friends, are totally jealous. Your readers seem to really love your work, and yet when talking to the prisoners earlier you told the story of a boy stopping you on a train platform in your home town of Dublin, asking if you were Roddy Doyle, and when you acknowledged that you were, the boy quipped back “And so what?”. A very telling, very self-deprecating anecdote. Here we are, on this very cold, horrid London morning in HMP Brixton, yet you are fresh off a plane, and chatting to prisoners for hours on end.

How do you feel?

Roddy doyle: I’m a regular visitor to London, I have a musical on

in the West End at the moment and a script in development, so it’s become a second home of sorts. I feel very familiar here. Only an

hour’s flight from Dublin, and as a father I’m an early waker. I work at home, my life is very placid, very regular. I have to find excuses to leave the house, really. I work in the attic of my own home, and if you asked me, going up there is the only exercise I’d get all day, so when I’m asked to do things like this in prisons, I’m inclined to say “Yes!”. Maybe once every a couple of years I’ll go somewhere far away, you know, but when it comes to prison I think it sounds a bit selfish, but it feels different. I know people who’ve been in prisons, and who’ll be going into prisons – I know myself, if I was in prison, anything that would make the day anything out of the ordinary would be very welcome. So I reckon if I do visit a prison it maybe won’t have a huge impact, but it might make someone’s day. I’ve been to all the prisons in Ireland – there aren’t all that many, it’s a small country – and I’ve always felt welcome, always enjoyed it, always end up seeing a familiar face. If it’s Dublin, maybe there’ll be someone I used to know, maybe someone I used to teach, when I worked in schools, or even someone who works in prison that I used to teach, so there’s always this real connection.

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Not Shut Up Interview

MK: But you don’t fly into London to spend time in the Hilton or

other posh places – reading about you and your life, I hear you support a London football team and you used to live just down the road from Not Shut Up, in Peckham of all places...

RD: I started supporting Chelsea when I was a child. I was watching the FA Cup Final in 1965 with my father, and he didn’t support anyone. I decided to support one of the teams playing – think it was Chelsea versus Spurs – during the match, and by the time it was over, I was a Chelsea supporter – even though they lost that particular time. All friends of mine were Man U, Leeds were big too. But the trip from Eire to England is always a big thing, and so many people cross from Ireland that the population of Liverpool must almost double when they’re playing at home.

MK: Perfect sense. Tell us about the days you used to live in Peckham, all your past jobs before you became a writer.

RD: As a student, when I finished

my exams, I was lucky to get a job two summers in a row in London.

Essentially, I was just making money, but it was also an excuse to be around different things. It was 1978, 1979, the 1 Don’t strain too much over the first sentence. music was amazing, I went to gigs in The first few lines you write aren’t going to be Hammersmith, heard The Ramones there at the end, probably, so try to move along. play, and Jonathan Richman and 2 Don’t worry about people looking over your The Modern Lovers, then saw the shoulder, just try to fill the page for your own self. beginning of the football season. It was amazing to actually be there, rather 3 Worry about editing at the end. At the start be than be watching it on an old black kind to yourself, you can be more fussy once the and white TV, hoping the reception writing’s done. would hold out until Match of the 4 Fight that common feeling of self-defeat, Day. Before that, I worked in a food especially when facing that lonely empty page. processing factory in Germany. All that life is gone, even though there MK: There is usually a question 5 Always measure the amount of words you are still factories, but that shift-work prisoners ask writers when they visit, write, it helps to remember that every page is a routine, big gangs of Irish students, a question not asked at other literary triumph, especially when using a computer. all seasonal, all over Europe, that’s events: ‘How much money you make?’

6 Don’t worry about plot too much at first. all gone. Stuffing fruit into cans But a more polite and professional Whether the story is straight or more complex, and jars, alongside Turkish women, question would be: ‘Is it possible to like Dead Man Talking, just get the words down.

Spanish workers, we were all visitors make a living from writing?’ then, before the EU expanded. It was RD: Well, if I was a marketing man, I’d interesting to get close to that life, say I’ve got a ‘brand’, you know, my to observe it, and the rhythm is still there for me, even now. Just name is recognised, in Ireland, and quite a bit here too. But for my brushing the floor at home I get flashbacks to sweeping up in that first book, The Commitments, I took out a bank loan to publish it factory. I was younger than most of the Irishmen there, some fallen myself, in 1987. Then Dan Franklin – an editor at Jonathan Cape, on hard times, along with some of the Jamaican men, but then I a publishing house in London – liked it and put out a separate became a teacher, where I grew up, in a comprehensive school, for edition in 1988, and it’s been in print ever since. Then there was 14 years. That was the making of me, I loved that job, to come face the movie, now a West End show, it all in a way allows me, being to face with all this energy, I liked it immediately. I wrote the first self-employed, to survive. For years, when writing something new, four of my novels while still teaching, and I only gave it up because I work and get no pay or earn very, very little. Even a successful I had kids of my own and I could’t write and do all that. Twentybook is only so for a short amount of time, and not long after this two years ago, and it’s still a colossal influence on me today. success the royalty cheques start getting smaller and smaller. The

Roddy doyle’s Tips on getting going as a writer

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West End show allows me to work for nothing with teenagers and in prisons. Now I am working on an opera project, for which I’m getting way less than the minimum wage, but on balance I can make a very good living. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha became a Booker Prize winner, and it was on the Irish bestsellers list for a whole year – I had a bit of wit about me to put some of that money away, a sort of pension fund. So now I can do work and relax, though there have been years of things drying up.

mK: So being a writer of a hit book is a bit like being a bank

robber – you earn a fair bit at once, get some respect and fame, but you have to be careful how you spend the money in the long run?

Rd: I suppose so. Though bank robbing is the kind of profession in which you’re gonna meet your Butch Cassidy moment, and go down eventually. With books you can always write more. I thought the writing would dry up, but it never does.

mK: You’ve won the Booker Prize, the Mount Everest of writing

ambition, have been successful in every kind of writing. Was there ever a moment when you thought – yes, I’ve done it! I’ve achieved the dream...

Rd: Prizes are a nice night out, that’s all. Five Booker Prize judges chose my book over 160 others, and I accept it as a nice compliment, but it does not make Paddy Clarke Ha Ha a better book or me a better writer. I’ve got four honorary doctorates from various universities, so I suppose I could call myself Dr Dr Dr Dr Doyle. But they’re not what makes me work. Little things are what I remember. I was on a commuter train once and heard a lady laugh out loud, and I looked over and she was reading one of my books.

You could see she was embarrassed, and was trying not to laugh, but just couldn’t help herself. That was really great. I write books for different age groups, and I once got a great letter from a kid in England, which started: ‘Dear Roddy Doyle, I hope you are alive...’

mK: Alive and kicking! You write about real-life problems,

domestic abuse, poverty, and now in Ireland about the renewed economic strife – do you see yourself as a sort of voice for common, downtrodden folk?

Rd: I never see myself as a spokesperson for any group of people.

But I did help set up a charity called Fighting Words, for kids in Dublin, and when I talk about them I am a spokesperson. I did look around me, when the economy collapsed. I was as anxious as anyone else, going to bed and thinking: Would money exist the following day? It really was that bad. I recall someone whispering in my ear: ‘Get your money out of Ireland’. I had £27 in my pocket, I didn’t even understand what that meant! So, I respond to what I see, what I feel. Getting older has been a big inspiration for me: that’s not class-bound, we’re all getting older, we feel the same.

You have a two-year kid, a lovely wee kid, then 20 years later it’s suddenly an adult with a beard, and you don’t have to be a working class person to share that common feeling of grief at time passing,

mixed with pride and anxiety. So I kind of use my own feelings, my conversations with people, things I overhear. I use the bus and the train in Dublin, cos it’s easier than driving, and you overhear things, like my daughter in the kitchen, chatting with her friends, using a word I haven’t heard before. I do write about everyday experiences, inevitably sometimes they’re out of the ordinary, but mostly it’s just real life. The Guts, my follow-up book to The Commitments, about Jimmy Rabbitte, a middle-aged band manager, had him in his kitchen trying to tell his wife he has bowel cancer. And he can’t do it, so he ends up emptying the dishwasher, instead of telling her. Sad, but so very true.

mK: We all age, though there is an exception to this –

international celebs. You’re the same age as Johnny Depp, or Brad Pitt, but you’ve invested your energies not in the pursuit of good looks or stardom, but in things like Fighting Words.

I love the idea of writers not disappearing up the Mount Olympus of the literary world, but like your good friend Dave Eggers, continuing to use your fame and fortune to help others.

Tell us more about Fighting Words, the charity you helped set up.

Rd: It’s a very similar place to the Ministry of Stories, a centre in London that Nick Hornby, another good friend of mine, founded.

It’s a centre for children and young people, in the north inner city of Dublin. We’ve already had 50,000 children in the door, all of them invited to write a story, or bring a book home with the story, all together. With secondary school kids, we try and give them something to do with writing that’s creative, and they can do sound production, or film. Some of these kids come to us at 16, and I find it really invigorating, chatting to them, trying to make writing as doable as possible. Teachers love it too, they don’t have to plan it, grade it, etc. We try to introduce kids and teens to many ways of writing. It’s not just education, but integration into society, confronting what bothers us all – the terror of failure, of not being allowed to change your mind. You’re punished if you change your mind in ordinary education, so we actually encourage them to try it, put lines through words, and there’s no mad rush to finish. I do it because I enjoy it – that phrase ‘give something back’ makes me gag. I just enjoy it, it gets me out of the house.

FIGHTING WORDS – The write to right Fighting Words is a creative writing centre established

by Roddy Doyle and Seán Love. Inspired by 826 National in the United States, Fighting Words is located on Behan Square, Russell Street, Dublin 1 – very close to Croke Park.

It provides free tutoring and mentoring in creative writing and related arts to as many children, young adults and adults with special needs as they can reach. Their programmes and workshops are delivered mainly by volunteers.

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Quick Reads Project

dead man talking an extract by Roddy doyle

Chapter One I met Joe again the night before his funeral.

Let me explain.

When I was younger than I am now, I knew a man called Joe Murphy. In fact, I knew him before he was a man. I knew him since we were kids.

We were best friends.

But I hadn’t seen Joe in nine or ten years. We’d had a fight.

A big fight.

I know what you are thinking. At least, I think I know what you are thinking. ‘It must have been about a woman.’ But you are wrong. The fight had not been about a woman. It had been about a horse. It had been about a horse and three women.

But the story isn’t really about the fight.

I don’t know where to start.

I can start in Joe’s house, the night before his funeral. Or I can go back to the time when we had the fight. Or I can go all the way back to the time when we were two small boys playing football.

We were best friends, kicking the ball against the side wall of Joe’s house. We were both going to play for Manchester United and we were never, ever going to fight.

If I was reading this story, I would want to read about meeting Joe the day before his funeral. Because it is a bit mad. It is not something that happens every day, is it? If it was the day before his funeral, Joe must have been dead.

That is what you are thinking.

And you are right. He was dead.

He was dead. But then he started talking to me.

I don’t know where to start.

I don’t even know if I want to start. But I have to.

Chapter Two Everything was normal.

I drove home from work. I’m a printer.

I was a printer.

I drove home and parked the car. I went into the house and kissed my wife, Sarah. It was what I did every day.

‘How was work?’ she asked.

‘Grand,’ I said. ‘And you?’

‘Grand too,’ she said.

Sarah worked down the road, in the local supermarket.

We had the dinner – fish and chips.

Sarah had got the fish and chips on her way home from work. She had texted me.

Chipper? X. I had texted her back. For sure – lol. X. ‘Lovely bit of fish,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And the chips are perfect.’

‘Lovely.’

It was not the most exciting chat we ever had.

But I need you to know that it was normal. At least, I thought it was normal.

‘I think I’ll go for a pint,’ I said.

‘Grand,’ she answered.

This was how it was every night. I went for a pint, just one. And Sarah watched crap

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on the TV. Then I came home and we would both watch crap together.

I stood up.

‘See you later,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Enjoy your pint.’

I got my coat and went to the front door.

I put my hand on the handle.

I heard Sarah.

‘Pat!’ Her voice was high. She sounded scared, like she had just seen a mouse or

something.

‘What?’ I shouted.

‘Pat!’ Now I was scared. I went back to the kitchen.

‘What’s wrong?’

She was standing now. She was holding her mobile phone.

‘It’s Joe,’ she said.

‘Joe who?’ I asked.

She shouted at me.

‘Joe!’ She looked pale. Her hands were shaking.

I understood now.

‘My Joe?’ I said.

She nodded.

‘Yes.’ Joe had been the best man at our wedding.

‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘What happened?’

‘He’s – ’ ‘Dead?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Pat, I’m so sorry.’

She started to cry. And so did I. She hugged me.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again.

I was glad she didn’t say more. She just held me.

‘How did you find out?’ I asked her.

She held up her phone. I had not heard it ringing when I was going out of the house.

But I didn’t say anything. I forgot about it.

It was not important.

‘You are cold,’ she said.

But I was not cold. She was. I was shivering – because I was holding a very cold woman.

I let go of Sarah. I stepped back and looked at her, carefully.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

She seemed stiff – solid. Like a statue. A statue made of ice. Green ice.

Then she moved. It was like she moved just an inch. I think it was the light coming through the window. The sun was low outside. It was nearly night, and the sun had gone into my eyes. It had made me think that Sarah looked like ice. But now she was back to normal.

But I know now. Nothing was normal.

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Not Shut Up Academy

the runner

by Chris Wilson

A

ngel was all fucked up, she had this thing when she shot coke she had to take off all of her clothes because she thought they were gonna catch fire then she’d get out this little razor blade from her purse and she’d start doing surgery on her arms and her legs.

What the fuck are you doing Angel? I’d say.

My body’s full of bugs man, they’re everywhere, inside me, and I got to get them out.

Angel, there’s no bugs in your body, you’re just paranoid.

Then she’d grind her teeth together and get out this folded up piece of paper she’d torn from a kids’ science book and hold it out for you to read.

It said “Each human body contains four pounds of microbes, living organisms that have created a niche for themselves inside us all part of the wonderful world of nature.”

And you’d say, Wow. And she’d look real serious and take back the piece of paper and say, See what I mean?

Then you’d just kind of let her get on with it.

Angel lived in this burnt out car behind the railroad tracks on Third Street. I used

to go down there with my pipe and I’d break her off a crumb and sit in the back seat beside her and we’d smoke and she’d talk about weird shit like how she could sometimes see the spirits of bad people floating above their heads, how they made a weird sound like a million flies buzzing around a toilet bowl. Sometimes, when we were smoking she’d look over at me like she expected me to kiss her but I never did, but you know if we’d shot enough heroin I’d let her lean into my chest and she’d wrap her skinny arms around my waist and lay her head into my shoulder and she’d start humming these little kiddie songs. She said her mom used to sing them to her and she’d forgotten them for so long but now they were all coming back.

At first, it would be nice ‘cos she had a sweet little voice but then I’d start feeling like maybe something was wrong and I’d take her arms off me and push her head back up straight and climb out of the car and she’d say, Where you going?

And I’d say, I don’t know, I just gotta go.

And she’d say, OK. And I’d shut the door and head back up to Mission.

Angel had the virus, but so did a lot of

people back then. She used to go round with this Indian kid from Oklahoma who drew pictures of horses and eagles in chalk on the sidewalk while he was waiting for her to come back from doing a trick. When he overdosed with the needle still in his arm Angel had just pulled it out and finished the shot.

Angel was a runner. That meant she worked for the Mexicans down on Mission and 16th, brought them customers and watched out for the cops, for every three that Angel sold they’d give her one for free.

Are you looking? Are you looking?

She’d call, up and down Mission Street, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Are you looking to score? Do you need something?

Chiva Coca Chiva Coca, hey man, are you looking or what?

I was never a runner, I was always in a hurry, so I found other things that worked for me. One nite, I got a purse from a lady in a fur coat up outside the opera house and inside the purse next to all the money and the check book and the credit cards was this driver’s licence with Angel’s face on it.

I showed it to George who was driving, and I said, George, look at this.

And he said, Fuck man, that’s angel!

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running out of the store and two security are behind her and we throw open the door and she dives in on top of me and George steps on the gas and a fucking security man steps in front of the car and we hit him and he comes flying up on the wind screen and he’s trying to hold on like a fucking 10 dollar an hour hero and his fingers are wrapped in the window so I punch his hand real hard and he lets go and he goes spinning down Market Street behind us.

Artwork by Chris wilson, various media on canvas

And I said, It sure fucking is, we got to go get her and clean her up.

So that’s what we did. We drove down to Angel’s burnt out car and gave her a dime of rock and said: Come with us. And we rented a room with a shower up on 14th and Valencia, and George went upstairs and got some clothes from some old hooker we knew and we cleaned Angel up and made her comb her hair and we put her in these straight clothes and threw her old shit in the trash room then we showed her the driver’s licence and made her start practicing the signature.

Leona Ward Leona Ward Leona Ward And Angel starts looking thru the purse and finds these photos of two kids with Leona and then a picture of her husband and a dog and she’s saying out loud: Leona Ward, and staring at the photo on the driver’s licence.

And I said to George, This is going really well, ‘cos she thinks it’s fucking her!

And George nodded his head and pulled on his little goatee beard and said, Lets go make some money!

And we did.

We started with the gas stations and cartons of cigarettes then up to Cala Foods in the Castro and bottles of Courvoisier and Johnny Walker Red Label and Angel’s a pro and is getting better every time and we’re not fucking around with fences we go straight to the dealers and then back to the hotel room to fix then back in the car and do it again and the next morning we’re still running and hit Neiman Marcus and the Emporium and she’s flashing that plastic and we got dresses and jackets and Calvin Klein but you know that card’s about to burn out and each time she flashes it could be the last and then it happens in Macy’s, we’re in the car out front and Angel comes

Well, Angel that’s it girl, I said, fun’s over, throw that purse away.

And she’s climbed in the back seat and she’s holding the purse real tight against her breasts and shaking her head and says, No, I’m going to keep this.

And George says, No, you’re not, you stupid bitch, because if you get stopped you’ll get us done with your crazy big mouth so give me that purse or I’m gonna break your jaw.

And I say, Calm down, George.

And I climb in the back with Angel and I say to her real soft, Listen, honey, you can keep the pictures of the kids and the dog and even the husband but we’re gonna get rid of the cards and the cheque book and the I.D., ok?

And she just looks out the other window like she’s ignoring me and I put my hand up to her cheek real gently and I can see she’s crying and I’m quiet for a while then she nods her head and hands me the purse.

Say, goodbye Leona, George says, thinking it’s funny and I say, Shut up, man.

And I take out the photos and lipstick and this little charm bracelet with silver hearts on it and put them in Angel’s hand and George pulls up by a dumpster on Harrison and I get out the car and hide the purse under the trash and we take Angel back down to her burnt out car and I even open the door for her to get out, then say, Thanks, that was fun.

And she said, Yea.

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Anna Robinson’s

Poetry Pages

Bread and Butter I come from women called Mrs Ashforth, Mrs Draper, broken biscuits, cracked eggs, co-op divi, provident cheques, So far a straightforward list - describing a mid century respectable British working class life - it goes on - becoming a bit grittier with the mess of family life: I come from looney bins and whalebone corsets, hysterectomies, the change, varicose veins.

Overall, the poem gives us a picture of the light and dark aspects of mid-20th century working class life. I give you the last verse in full, simply because I love it:

I come from the kitchens of women, owners of preserving pans and garden fences.

I come from land lost in a hand of cards.

I come from girls who had no schooling.

I come from the deaths of Holy Martyrs.

I come from women married to men who laboured in a country they didn’t call home.

That is your writing prompt this month. You can take the phrase “I come from...” or “I was raised by...” or “I looked for myself in...” as your starting point and see where it takes you.

This season’s post brought in a poem that responded to the Viking Kenning exercise and one that responded to the George Perec observation exercise. “Concrete Cell” by Miles has some interesting kennings in it. I especially like exit-shutters for officers. John’s “From My Window” poem is based on his daily observation in the spirit of Perec. It’s amazing how much he sees out there, much of it mysterious.

Our big news with this issue is our brand new creative writing course - see the piece promoting this on page 31. This is a pilot and is a collaborative partnership with the University of East London.

The pilot will consist of just 20 students, and if successful, will lead to a 4 module Cert HE course. If you fancy being one of those 20 students, have 6 months or more to serve after the course start date of end of September, apply ASAP to Prisoners’ Education Trust, via your education department. Open to writers of any kind, not just poets!

Happy Reading - and, as ever Happy Writing!

Anna Robinson, Poetry Editor

Photo by brittany aPP

In the poetry pages, we have a number of poems that attempt to look at the poet’s origins, as if they were introducing themselves to us. It is a common workshop exercise and can be very successful.

The two poems that start with the phrase “I was raised by…” were both generated in workshops run collaboratively by us and the community arts organisation Safe Ground, in Wandsworth prison. They have been published in a very stylish book, which was hand-bound during workshops held in prison and in the local community. T. Glowacki, a Polish man who participated in these workshops, and who was featured in issue 27, starts his poem with “I looked for myself in the mist…” as if he is looking for who he is really in order to be able to make this introduction.

These poems remind me of a poem by Jo Roach, a Hackney born and bred poet, who writes beautiful and evocative poems that explore her working class heritage. The poem called “Bread and Butter” was published in a new voices anthology called Oxford Poets - 2007 (Carcanet).

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02/06/2015 22:13

Poetry

Children of Misfortune

Concrete Cell

Arthur MacTaggart (now released)

Miles Obeney (HMP Pentonville), in response to Kennings exercise

Concrete Cell, purgatory hell break free, bolt cutters devil’s-angels fell key exit-shutters actions under spells, time tells screws no encouragement, brain blank bang-em-up slam healthcare help, life on the shelf door behind, time-use wise education certificate, new opportunity job… wear greens, no brainers… violent gym keep-fit, right fist… knock out vocals shout, C Major “wanna get out” lock down… inner thoughts time can’t buy, eventually flies by barriers hurdle, free, rehabilitated criminal record, non employment homeless sofa-surf, social, heroin and crack smoke money crime, police-siren nicked get-caught, go courts revolving door, re-offend bell not saved return concrete hell

from Sincere Repentance Francisco Cabral

Father God without your love and mercy, I see myself falling.

Save me from evil things blessed and around my loved ones Let know those you love be the same because of me.

We war-torn folk, more scar than skin, whose ancient grief had once set in, whose past is coiled so tight within, still stand against the seasons.

We war-torn folk, with older eyes, have seen cruel circumstance arise, yet with the courage time supplies will venture ever onwards.

We war-torn folk the fates applaud; We sturdy souls with shoulders broad; We villains brave, we heroes flawed; We children of misfortune.

Mist T. Glowacki (HMP Wandsworth), from Home

I looked for myself in the mist, for the me from years gone by.

I look, though I’m blindfolded by a curtain of darkness.

I see shapes, but when I try to touch they turn to slime and seep through my fingers, turning into shards of crushed glass.

I am cut, a fire burns, feeling zilch.

Senses departed.

For good?

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02/06/2015 22:16

Poetry

Changes Bob Beck (HMP Grendon)

I heard it on the radio today and recalled that you played Ellington from memory your fingers knowing acting the sophisticated lady with a Manhattan at your side like your mother before she took the art train and sometimes I sat with you because I could read the guitar chords though I needed your nod for the changes.

On the wall above us wherever we lived there was always that photo you took of our son aged six sitting at the piano turned to look back at you a big-eyed satin doll the man he became dead forever looking into the lens and waiting for your nod for the changes.

Are you playing now your fingers leadened by grief sober for him if not for you and with him still dancing doing the jump like the little boy he once was do nothing ’til you hear from me you said so I waited and lost but I still need your nod for the changes.

I know you don’t want me to see your brown eyes cry not now the bridge is down and that last day you accused me of faking a sentimental journey and leeching into your life for the lack of blood in mine a hollow man you said hitching on the caravan of another’s experience and looking to your nod for the changes.

What I’ll do when you are far away you said and I am all alone free what if the stars fell down and the river floods without you play some swing again play them all for him and your shattered heart and I’ll try to remember the chords though I’ll always need your nod for the changes.

Smoke on the Breeze Arthur MacTaggart (now released)

They’ll carry me by cart up to the pyre in the square to make some entertainment to the crowds that gather there.

They’ll bind me to a wooden post and offer me a prayer then I’ll sing for them! I’ll dance for the them! I’ll thicken up the air.

All you civilised spectators, crane your necks and get a view.

Just be wary, all you lookers-on, for someone looks on you.

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03/06/2015 20:46

From My Window

John Burns (HMP Isle of Wight), in response to George Perec exercise

Light – morning morning boys and girls but no scraps here black headed gulls nearly ready to depart brave Mum no just stupid three out the nine, herring gull’s scooby snack, last seen wriggling legs before swallowed still able to take off after that snack Mum waddles past with a brief glance behind seeming to say okay, but leave the rest.

Oh great – ding dong – Morning why doesn’t someone say to you your bum does look big in those but I’ve no doubt your sexiness and beauty derives from the size of your heart.

Staring at me won’t make me look away I’m in prison remember: no gentlemen here Bye, see ya to-morrow morning.

Wow, that’s a first this year here despite the shyness I’ve seen you take Robin and be free.

Cold Killer Ade (HMP Wandsworth), from Home

I was raised by a cold killer “Two for a pound, two for a pound” the smell of trees burning.

See loves me, see loves me not.

Sorry, I mean she.

Princess and frog. Eh we cried, when watching them snog.

It was such a nice place, 116, where we played with sticks.

My father plays the mouth organ, now he rests in peace.

How sad I remember him being a cold killer.

Trumpet

Louis (HMP Wandsworth), from Home

I was raised by trumpets, drums and laughter with the smell of crumpets accompanied by plaster.

The workmen worked and enjoyed a break with tea and cake after.

Another man would curse, until the Lion was awake, a self-proclaimed master.

This was home, Gypsy Hill, yet a Crystal Palace, until we moved to Essex.

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Opinion

ON CHARLIE HEBDO, PRISONS AND THE ART OF ASKING QUESTIONS Commentary by Marek Kazmierski, Managing Editor I know many of you will all have read plenty on the subject of Charlie Hebdo Magazine by the time this text is published. For those who don’t know or don’t remember what happened in Paris earlier this year, a weekly cartoon journal which pokes fun at anything and anyone was attacked by extremists, who went on to kill the editorial team with machine guns, and then escaped, killing more people as they went on the run.

Since then, many other things have happened. A German pilot seems to have committed suicide by flying his plane into a mountain, killing the other 150+ passengers on board. Many more killings have happened in the Middle East and parts of Africa and, not to be forgotten, in the US at the hands of armed forces, including police increasingly accused of excessive violence, corruption and racism.

But, here at Not Shut Up, we are still concerned with the fallout from the Charlie Hebdo killings. And some of the mysteries which remain. If its staff were being protected by police, how did the killings come to be? If the killings were motivated by religion, why was a French policeman of Arab origin one of the first to die?

What sorts of weapons were used in the attacks, how did the attackers get them and will this information ever reach our ears?

Did those working for Charlie Hebdo really understand the risks they were taking, and if so does that equate to heroism?

I have seen and read the profiles of those who were killed in those editorial offices. They were grown, intelligent looking men (with the telling exception of one woman), to all intents and purposes capable of assessing and managing the absolute risk they were taking. But were they? Do any of us, as we go about the daily business of our modern, secularised lives, really understand what it means to be a “fundamentalist”? To come from a place on the map where the most awful of deaths, human-upon-human killing,

is a daily reality? To be so determined as to access an arsenal in the heart of modern Europe and unleash it against fellow human beings, knowing the consequences of such acts are essentially irrevocable and tragic for all, including the self? Hence ultimately suicidal?

I sit in my office today, trying to figure it all out, and cannot. I worked in prisons for a decade, and in that time I had investigated over 1000 racist incidents, managed the multifaith chaplaincy team, organised numerous cultural training sessions and festivals.

I worked with former child soldiers, saw horrific violence, experienced deaths of both prisoners and staff. Yet I am still profoundly ignorant, in the way the vast majority of us are, of what some of the darker elements of nature contain.

For these very reasons, I would not publish or republish Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Because as imperfect as my own thinking is, I understand that between those who believe in the fundamental right to free speech and those who are fundamentalist killers is a massive, yawning, un-breachable gap. That of the creative versus the destructive.

Every year, our factories and sales teams and transportation systems manage to supply the world with 12,000,000,000 bullets (enough to kill every human being on the planet twice over) – until we hold our own governments to account for the wrongs they do abroad, until we stop the criminal behaviour of our own banks and corporations, until we house, feed and nurse those who are needy in our own streets, we will not be able to forgive ourselves for “fighting” a campaign for any sort of freedom. Because, in our own consciences, we cannot claim the fundamental right to freedom of speech. Not until our words truly become the equals of our actions.

Marek Kazmierski, Managing Editor

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03/06/2015 20:55

Charity Feature

Working Chance

By Giulia Isabel Cirillo

Unlocking your potential after prison – the role of creativity in rehabilitation

E

dwin Land was an American scientist best known as the inventor of the Polaroid camera. A prolific innovator who helped develop some truly revolutionary technologies, Land once said that “an essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail”. I think this is a brilliant statement because it sums up the unglamorous truth of what it means to think outside the box: when we allow ourselves to imagine the new and the different, we must be prepared for that fact that some of our creations may be a success, but many undoubtedly will not.

Creativity is often stifled when we struggle to come to terms with our mistakes – when we allow the failures of the past to become fear of the future. It is little wonder, then, that those who spend time in prison may end up losing the fearlessness required to embrace the power of creativity.

People with convictions are one of the most marginalised, stigmatised groups in our society today; for many, a criminal conviction leads to an unshakeable sense of shame, which in turn leads to a permanent loss of confidence and self-belief.

Working Chance is a London-based charity supporting women with convictions into sustainable, quality jobs. Our employability workshops incorporate a variety of role plays, which allow candidates to practise their assertiveness and public speaking skills. Candidates tell us these

exercises are crucial to their success at job interviews; their impact is truly transformative, enabling even the shyest women to build up their confidence in a safe, non-judgemental environment. We also work in partnership with external organisations to deliver specialist training: we have just completed our first course of classes with The Comedy School, a nonprofit organisation helping people of all ages to develop social skills and literacy through the medium of comedy. Alongside our performance-focused curriculum, we use arts-based activities as a space for the development of strong, supportive peer relationships; this year we celebrated International Women’s day with an Arts & Crafts Afternoon, which involved painting posters and marching out with them onto the street of Islington.

At Working Chance we reject the

idea that one size fits all; our bespoke recruitment service is built around the personal journey of each woman. We work with candidates for as long as they need and we have a dedicated support team helping them overcome barriers to employment such as debt, homelessness and domestic abuse.

Failure is scary, and makes it hard to believe in our own potential for success.

Only by reminding ourselves of our creative potential will we ever move on from our mistakes.

Working Chance is open for registration to any woman who has been involved in the criminal justice system in the last three years.

If you would like to register or refer someone you know for registration, please call 0207 278 1532.

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03/06/2015 20:58

An English PEN book

Landscape and memory Readers & Writers Introduction by Irene Garrow I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes. Vladimir Nabokov

This is the fourth year of the English PEN writing competition for men and women in prison, judged this year by the writer Meg Rosoff, who chose two themes and a wonderful landscape image to inspire our entrants. It worked! We had a bumper year with over 500 entries from 80 prisons stretching from France to Scotland, England and the Channel Islands. This work has grown out of our Readers & Writers programme, which sends writers and books into prisons to deliver workshops and opportunities to meet new writers and read new books. There are many cliches around literature in prison: the freedom of books, a captive

audience, the great escape. But cliche is rooted in truth; taken captive by a book, escaping into your past world through writing, feeling the freedom to tell a story, is a way of understanding your own life and the lives and minds of others. Words call up memories, ideas, thoughts; they spark the imagination. Books help you learn which is why English PEN has been campaigning to ensure easy access to books in prison. In the end we, there was enough good writing for two collections. Prisoners are locked up behind bars from weeks to tens of years, time can lie very heavily. By taking part in this competition, telling us about their favourite reads and writing poems, flash fiction and stories, the men and women have used their time well, captured the moments and shared them with us, the readers, in funny, sad, honest and thoughtful ways. English PEN thanks you all.

In a parallel universe Gareth Kerr (HMP Shotts) POETRY/WINNER

In a parallel universe: I found the chimps that typed out the complete works of Shakespeare, it was infinitely strange.

Gave Schroedinger’s cat a saucer of milk, it drank the lot and ignored it.

Flew from a black hole, eyes shielded from the glare.

Met myself and argued.

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I

can remember my father’s hands against the stone; blue-veined like his favourite cheese. His bones always looked too big for his skin, as if they were about to burst through as he lifted the stones into place and positioned then re-positioned them with a desire for precision that I could never understand. Almost forty years later I can still feel a hint of shame and sadness that I had thought to myself, “What’s the point?”

I recall watching him as I kicked stones around the path just to let him know that I wasn’t really interested in what he was doing. But I was. He seemed so intent; as if every stone really mattered; as if they would only feel happy seated in exactly the right position in the wall.

Recalling the familiar tap of my father’s hammer as he worked, it reminded me how I could never understand why he chose to build walls, especially out in the middle of nowhere. Why couldn’t he just work in a nice warm office like my friends’ fathers? Maybe he’d have been able to afford a new car like them, rather than his embarrassingly shabby Land Rover. I once asked my mum why he did it. There was something strange about her voice when she answered: “Because your dad is very good at building walls”. That stuck with me for some unknown reason, surfacing during the echoing silences, when my dad sat staring into the fire while my mum lost herself in a library book. Years can add intolerable weight to words, leaving them heavy like stone.

Standing here now, the wall looks sadly uncared for. Off into the distance my dad’s stones had been dislodged over time until it faded to nothing. It was as if the journey to the horizon was just too arduous and it had simply given up. Maybe it had been deterred by the sinister looking barns or the dark wood at the edge of the empty field? My eyes followed the curling line of the path to its vanishing point then up to the vastness of the sky. I felt like I had run toward a cliff’s edge before leaping into the void. The sky was a swirling porridge of clouds stirred by a biting wind that stung my eyes.

“Can you see your face up there?” said my father without looking up from his work. He rarely spoke when he was working. Actually,

A face in the clouds Mark Banner (HMP Stafford) PROSE /WINNER

he rarely spoke.

“What?” I said, affecting my best grownup, disinterested voice. There were a few seconds of silence as he paid particular attention to the next stone. He reminded me of a butterfly collector adding a rare specimen, twisting it carefully until it sat perfectly in its place.

“Well, my dad used to tell me that when God was happy with you he sculpted the clouds to the shape of your face. So it’s always worth looking up just to see if you are in God’s good books.”

I thought about it for a while as he stood arching his back with his hands on his hips.

He grimaced at the ache of his bones, spat in his hands, rubbed them together then lifted the next stone. I looked up, turning slowly on the spot, scanning the sky for any sign of myself - but there was nothing.

“That one looks a bit like an old man with a beard,” I said almost hopefully.

“Maybe it’s God himself,” he said. “Or Father Christmas.”

“There’s no such thing as Father Christmas,” I replied with all the confidence I could muster, I looked across at my father and caught the last, fleeting remnant of a smile. He rarely smiled. Other fathers smiled, they even laughed out loud. I couldn’t help wondering if I made him sad for some reason. I never asked him though.

As we walked home, he put his hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him, but he stared straight ahead into the distance. I remember wondering if he was just checking that my bones were in the right place. I asked him when he’d finish his wall? “When there’s no stones left,” he answered. We walked on in silence, his hand still on my shoulder.

Now, I’m walking the same path, wondering if I should bring my own son to see his grandfather’s work. I think I’m worried that he’ll ask why I can’t build walls?

At the path’s end my father lies nearing his last breath. His blue-veined hands bony and still. His white beard and wind-worn face silent among the sheets.

Like a face in the clouds.

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03/06/2015 21:06

Life writing

NO prOblemO!!!

How pablo escobar saved my life – an extract by D.M. Cassidy

Based on an unbelievable but true story of how in 1989 I opened London House the first Acid House music club in South America, this fast paced story takes you from London’s illegal warehouse raves right into the very heart of Colombia’s powerful cocaine cartels. Then down to the exotic beaches of Brazil’s beautiful but highly dangerous Rio de Janeiro. Leading to a failed international drugs deal and a near fatal encounter with its infamous police death squads. Culminating in a terrifying escape across the vast Amazon basin and how by sheer luck... Pablo Escobar saved my life.

I

’d been running an alternative comedy club over a pub in my native East End which was doing well and gaining popularity. Comedians loved to come down to us and tackle the sarcastic wit and infamous heckling of the Cockneys. Doing well here was a feather in their cap, and many of them went on to be stars on radio and TV. It was because of the club that I happened to be in at the start of the acid house scene.

Schoom, Mendosas and Clink Street were some of the first underground venues.

They were the pioneers and slowly a few bigger places had one-off nights, like Trip on Saturdays at the Astoria and Spectrum under the arches at Heaven on a Monday night.

I had noticed that at the illegal raves not much attention was paid to any form of decoration. There was usually just the cheap poor quality sound system, a few black lights, the old smoke machine and not much else. I thought there was a chance to try and do something different and asked around for a suitable venue. The old-mates grapevine soon came through and led me to a meeting with Charlie - an East End

boy made good, ten years older than me, just turned 40. Charlie had taken over and expanded his old man’s fruit and vegetable import business and had a large unused warehouse, which apparently used to be an old Securicor depot. It was deemed to be too unlucky (or too risky) to be a secure warehouse after a third attempted robbery, but for a party it was perfect. It even had a walk-in safe with a huge thick round metal door, this we used as a mad chill out room.

That was back in the early autumn of 1988 just after the wonderful ecstatic Summer of Love and we had had a great run until now. Twice a month, we’d been gradually adding to the spectacle, with last night being the most theatrical so far.

Through a friend of my mother’s, who ran a film and theatre equipment hire company, I was able to use a wonderful sounding professional Bose twin-tandem soundsystem, some trance inducing tri-colour lasers, arc lighting all around the walls, in the middle of the ceiling directly above a raised platform where people danced was a huge star cloth giving the impression of being outside which was fun for the partypeople who were getting mangled on pills,

while the DJ booth was high above in the first floor offices with a perfect view over the whole club.

But that seemed to be all over now as I swished the tepid fruit juice around my mouth. Stuck to the bottom of the bottle was a flyer for our party - Unit 4 you know the score - just black and white lettering and the date in the right hand corner. We didn’t need to put the address on the flyer as people knew where we were. I peeled the flyer from the bottom of the bottle and flipped it over - and there was the reason I had slipped it in my jeans the night before: the rather elegantly written words “call me today please”, a phone number and the name ‘Pilar’.

Thinking back to the night before, I remembered that one of the security boys had come looking for me. He asked me to follow him as there were a couple of girls wanting to speak to me, mentioning that they were pretty good looking too. Working our way through the heaving crowds, we reached the entrance and true to his words there stood two stunning olive-skinned dark haired girls wrapped up in warm coats with large smiles on their faces. I

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Pablo Escobar, Colombian drug lord and cocaine trafficker

introduced myself and they explained in an accent which I took to be Spanish, how much they had enjoyed themselves and loved this new kind of music. They had seen me do my DJ set earlier, and the prettier one said she had a cousin who ran a club and wondered if I would like to come and play. Being a bit occupied with running the night I said sure and asked her to give me her phone number. She handed me a flyer that she’d already written on and emphasised that I had to call her later the same day. If I didn’t, it would be too late.

‘Too late for what?’ I wondered, but soon forgot about it due to the worry of running the night.

When, at about 6am a lone police car had pulled up outside the party had a look and driven off, I knew that was the time to get the money out of there. So by about 6.30 I had the money bag tucked safely down by the passenger seat and drove slowly through London, past Trafalgar Square where, funnily enough, all the Battersea Police officers had been on duty during the night, which was the reason we didn’t get shut down earlier. I was feeling pretty tired when I got home to my high-rise flat in Wapping with its amazing panoramic view over London. I decided to chill out with a joint and hit the sack. It had been a long day setting the party up which, as it turned out, was to be the last.

Not sure what to expect, I was put back a little when it was answered on the second ring, in the same sultry voice of the night before.

“Hola, Pilar here.”

Stumbling over my words, I managed to mumble that it was me from the night before. She let out a loud cried of relief explaining that she was just on her way out and could we possibly meet, and that it had to be now or it will be too late.

“I didn’t think you would call,” she said. I was intrigued and knew I would definitely love to see her again so we made arrangements to meet up at Nelsons Column, Trafalgar Square, in an hour. I drove my old Jaguar S-Type along the Embankment and parked in Northumberland Avenue, walked up and crossed the sparse New Year’s Day traffic into Trafalgar Square, and there she was, looking absolutely stunning in high boots skin-tight jeans with a short leather jacket accentuating her abundant curves. Her long dark hair framed slightly indigenous high cheek-boned features. We embraced and she gave me a naughty peck on the cheek. We walked on up to Leicester

Square, with her asking me to take photos of her in front of all the tourist spots.

Stopping off in a warm, welcoming pub we settled down to a double whisky for me and surprisingly, a pint of Guinness for her.

“Ok, now tell me all,” I said.

She explained in her near perfect but exotically accented English that her cousin had a wonderful discotheque in her home town and he would certainly be pleased to have me play there and that his clients have never heard music like last night. So, what was the reason why we had to meet up tonight, I enquired.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

This was shock number one. With all that had happened with the police, and beginning to like this girl, I said I’d do it and innocently asked her where she lived in Spain. Turning to me a little put out she said, “I’m not Spanish. I come from Colombia, South America.” Shock number two practically knocked me off my seat. This must have showed on my face. “You don’t like Colombia? Are you too scared to come?”

“No, not all,” I replied. “It’s just that it seems along way to go to play a gig and Colombia doesn’t really have a five star holiday rating.”

Everybody knew Colombia’s dodgy reputation, but it had some kind of mystical appeal, a near mythical Shangri-la hidden away somewhere between the South American Amazon and Andes Mountains.

The thought of actually going there to DJ along with the expectation of seeing Pilar again started to sound interesting.

Author ProfilE DANiEl MCGlYNN CASSiDY, born in east London, educated at Stratford Grammar, West Ham College. After leaving full time education, he had the burning desire to see the world and carried on doing so, until a few years ago he settled back in London with his Colombian wife and daughters, having lived (and visited prisons) in various countries, inc. Colombia, Holland and Greece.

Being a voracious reader, his tastes range from Homer to La Carre and everything in between. If he had to name the books that have inspired and left a lasting impression, these would be: Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut and Little Big Man by Thomas Berger.

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English PEN Fiction

A FANTASTIC JOURNEY Sean Meier (HMP Stafford) ENGLISH PEN PROSE /RUNNER UP

R

eading has always been a very important part in my life, from the very first time I visited my local library where I read about the exciting adventures of Henry the Helicopter, to the book I am currently reading, “War of the Crowns” by Christian Jacq. Reading is like all pastimes: I have read book after book, but also, usually when I’ve been extremely busy, there have been a number of weeks or even months before I have picked up another. I even have to confess, heaven forbid, that I nearly turned to the dark side. I followed the “IT” crowd and purchased an electronic reading device called a Kindle and proceeded to download complete series of e-books. However, I felt something wasn’t quite right – there was something missing! The feel of flicking over each rough page, the sometimes earthy smell of a wellworn book and the jubilation of finishing the last word on the last page were absent. I flicked off the power button and it now sits in its box, never to see the light of day again (or at least, until I decide to sell it). It can never compare to a book.

When I saw the advert for this writing competition on my wing, it ignited an unknown fire in me. Something like this I have never attempted or felt the need to, but I was soon brainstorming ideas. It wasn’t easy, but here is my attempt.

I am standing at the beginning of a long journey. It is reminiscent of when I start reading a new book. I stare at the cover, take in the view. Eagerly, I turn over the cover and find the first page, and on the picture I begin to walk. As I travel up the muddy, well-worn, uneven dirt track, it reminds me of the creased, discoloured, wellused pages you buy from second-hand shops or car-boot sales.

As I travel further along in my journey, I notice a rough, irregular, partially damaged stone wall that seems to guide me along my path, allowing me to go only where it lets me; it surrounds me, akin to the creamy, white border that surrounds the regiments of words on a page. Here and there, part of the wall has fallen down, much like the spirit of a leading character, temporarily broken due to some major catastrophe. The grey, never-ending wall twists and turns ahead of me, reminding me of

all the ever-changing plots and sub-plots contained within a book – you’re never certain exactly where it will take you.

I wander a little further where I notice sheep happily grazing on the field of lush, green grass. They are eating all that’s around them, devouring each blade of grass like a reader taking in each word. When a sheep has eaten all the grass that it can reach, it will move onto another area with new grass – reminiscent of me when I finish a book and find another one. It’s like a hunger in my brain; it needs constant stimulation, constant feeding.

I start to move over gently undulating land, up and then down, resembling all the emotional highs and lows that a novel contains.

As I wander further and further, there is a sense of loneliness and escape from the real world. I’m taking this journey alone as I would when I read a book and in times of stress and worry a book is a welcome escape from it all. I am happy in this book’s world, even if it’s only for a short time.

I’m nearly at the end of my walk now. The few, bare trees, with their long branches stretching up nearly touching the sky, remind me of a character whose inner thoughts and feelings are exposed, laid bare for everyone to see. I feel their love, their anger, their sorrow and their joy contained in the space of a few hundred pages and then I arrive at my journey’s end. I feel a great sense of euphoria and satisfaction; it’s like looking up into that bright, azure sky on a midsummer morning. However, this experience is also tinged with a little sadness because I have completed my quest, my journey, my book. Although, I know that very soon I will leave on another adventure.

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i

remember the year clearly; it was 1988, and I was in the prison Library in HMP Wandsworth, where I’d picked up the book “Roots” by Alex Haley. That was 26 years ago!

The first thing I noticed when I took the book from the bookshelf was the size of it. I then quickly flicked through to the back, noticing that the book consisted of 1,000 and something pages. My immediate reaction to this was that there was no way I could read a book that big. I had only ever read books with no more than 400 pages.

Therefore, holding such a big book in my hand at that time was extremely daunting, intimidating and challenging. I quickly read the back cover and was intrigued. I thought to myself “Fuck it, I’m going to read this book - the biggest book I’ve ever read in my life”. So I borrowed it from the library and took it to my prison cell to read.

The main character is a slave named Kunta Kinte, a Mandika warrior, born in the Gambia, West Africa in 1750, who as a newborn is held up towards the skies and blessed by his African warrior father. It was a time of slave traders.

At a young age, Kunta Kinte was a part of and witnessed the horrifying brutality of his slave masters, consisting of racial discrimination, lynchings, executions and brandings of his fellow black slaves who were punished for their misdeeds and nonconformity to their slave masters’ wishes.

The book also exposes generations of the harsh and brutal reality of the white man’s and white woman’s oppression and

ROOTS BY ALEX HALEY Lennox Watson (HMP Thameside) BOOK REVIEW RUNNER UP

inhumanity towards people because of the colour of their skin. In this instance it regards the colour of a black man’s or woman’s or child’s skin as unworthy and unequal to that of a white person’s skin, whether male, female or child, against the notion that “human beings are all God’s children - no matter what race, creed or colour of their skins!” But this was not so in the 17th century in West Africa, where the African race was disgracefully captured, enslaved, oppressed and downtrodden by the white imperial slave masters of their time, who had despicably treated the black race unfairly, unjustly and inhumanely.

Reading about the slave markets, where the slave owners would bid and sell slaves as human cargo, really touched upon my emotions, alongside the branding of slaves with a red-hot piece of iron that would burn through the flesh of their bodies. I was transfixed and appalled by the punishments and deterrents of slaves that tried to escape from their so-called slave masters; it was very heart-wrenching indeed.

Overall, the book is a truly painstaking and painful account of the slave trade that I will never forget in my lifetime.

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Arts feature

Outside In

Founded in 2006 by Pallant House Gallery, Outside In aims to provide opportunities for artists who align themselves with the project; those with a desire to create who see themselves as facing a barrier to the art world for reasons including health, disability, or social circumstance. The goal of the project is to create a fairer art world which rejects traditional values and institutional judgements about whose work can and should be displayed.

Working with over 2,000 artists, Outside In provides support, advice, training and opportunities for those with a gallery on the website. Since the project’s inception, Outside In has supported artists to develop their career, exhibit in national venues and sell their work to the general public as well as high profile collectors.

Nigel Kingsbury Nigel Kingsbury, one of the artists that the project supports, has developed a successful artistic career having been crowned an Outside In Award Winner in 2012. Born in 1949, Nigel has been a key member of Action Space, a London based visual arts organisation supporting the development of artists with learning disabilities, for over ten years. He creates fine, delicate portraits depicting women as mystical goddesses attired in glamorous ball gowns, decadent outfits and floating dresses. Each picture is unique, sometimes drawn from memory, sometimes of those in close proximity, but always of women he likes and is inspired by.

Drawing virtually every day, Nigel has been producing images of women since his 20s. During his time spent in hospital, he was inspired by the nurses, and when at home, he would source images by his dad recording TV programmes and freeze framing selected women for Nigel to sketch. This fascination with the female form inspires Nigel to create drawings with a frequently mysterious and eerie quality, although his idolisation of the figure in such a rare and carefully observed manner is far removed from contemporary issues of gender stereotyping.

Nigel was crowned an Award Winner after he submitted his piece Woman to Outside In’s third exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in 2012. This exhibition showcased 80 moving, beautiful and

unique works of art from across the UK, each one a testimony to the enduring creative spirit. Described as offering a “radical perspective on Britain today”

by Jonathan Jones of The Guardian, the National exhibition was the third open art exhibition from Outside In since the project’s inception. The triennial exhibition is one of the project’s main vehicles, the first being held in 2007 for Sussex based artists. By 2012, the project had gone national, growing significantly to engage further organisations, galleries and audience members.

The prize Nigel received as an Award Winner was a solo show in the Studio at Pallant House Gallery in January 2014. But it didn’t stop there for Nigel. In September 2014, he was selected from London based artists to have work appear in ‘The Inner Self: Drawings from the Subconscious’ at CGP London, Southwark Park; a group show of the work of seven Outside In artists, all working in predominantly black and white, on the theme of drawings from the subconscious. From the seven artists in the show, Nigel was chosen for the coveted prize of a solo show at the Julian Hartnoll Gallery in Duke Street, London, by Curator Vivienne Roberts.

“Nigel is a true and dedicated artist with an absolute passion for his art,” says Charlotte Hollinshead, Action Space’s Artist Tutor, of working with Nigel. “The love and care Nigel invests in his drawing is apparent in every pencil line. His drawing

is unpredictable and it is always a wonder watching as each of his carefully sketched figures develops. It is a privilege to work alongside such a talented, sensitive and unique man.”

Alongside his exhibiting success, Nigel has also had a piece bought by the Pallant House Gallery for its permanent collection. Simon Martin, Artistic Director at the Gallery says: “When considering a possible acquisition, we were drawn to Woman by Nigel because we felt it was a very powerful drawing that could easily hold its own alongside works by celebrated modern artists in the collection. It is a fine example of delicate craftsmanship, but also a compelling work that speaks of nuanced attitudes to women, and has a mystical quality we felt could be used in a variety of different thematic displays.”

Manuel Lanca Bonifacio Manuel Lanca Bonifacio, another 2012 Award Winner, has also achieved unprecedented success in the outsider art world since his win. Born in Portugal in 1947, Manuel currently spends his Wednesdays and Fridays at ArtVenture – a creative day centre for adults with learning difficulties in Guildford. Many of Manuel’s works reflect his childhood ambition of joining the army; depicting helicopters, aeroplanes, motorbikes and boats. Like Nigel, Manuel was offered a solo exhibition in the Studio at Pallant House

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Portuguese. His experimentation is equally as admirable as his obvious inquisitiveness: “I like everything!” he says when asked what his favourite medium is. In September 2014, Outside In took Manuel’s work to the Paris Outsider Art Fair. Originally founded in New York, the Fair first travelled to Paris in 2013 to critical acclaim, and is one of the key dates on the outsider art calendar. Manuel’s work was bought by high profile European outsider art and Art Brut collectors including the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne and the private and extremely prestigious Dammann Collection in Switzerland. Additionally, London Art Dealer Henry Boxer purchased works by Manuel, and now formally represents the artist.

David Jones

ChuCkle Brothers, by David Jones

Gallery following his Award win. This was very well received, with an outsider art collector travelling over from Switzerland to attend the much-anticipated private view. Roger Cardinal, the Art Historian who coined the term outsider art in 1972, was one of the judges for the 2012 National exhibition and attended the private view of Manuel’s solo show. Following his visit to the exhibition, he penned an article on the artist for Raw Vision Magazine, the world’s only international journal of the art of ‘unknown geniuses’ who are the creators of outsider art.

“It struck me as entirely familiar,” Roger Cardinal said after seeing Manuel’s exuberant Mermaid for the first time. “It made me think of the Frenchman Guillame

Pujolle, an early star of Art Brut whose lyrical images I cherish. The Mermaid is a perfect reality for Manuel. I see her arms and elongated fingers as enacting the motions of swimming, although she can also be said to be flying. Hence she is capable of traversing earth, sea and air, and becomes an emblem of the artist’s unfettered imagination.”

Importantly, Manuel’s work helps him expose his unique view to the world. He is continuously creating one piece after another; a drawing, a ceramic, a painting.

“When he’s working, he’s focusing on that; it’s how his mind works,” says his sister Maria Odone. But when he is finished, he is happy to sit down and talk through the characters he has created in his native

David Jones, another Outside In artist, was first inspired to take up art in 2007 whilst he was in prison. “I was not in a good state. I was in the detox wing. I started going to an art group on Monday mornings. If I wasn’t sleeping, I would do some art. Within weeks my walls were covered. When I got out, I started doing more art. I had a portfolio from prison and that got me on the fine art course at the City College in Brighton.”

David was crowned one of six Outside In Award Winners following an exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in 2009. As a result of being an Award Winner, he was offered a two year residency at Pallant House Gallery, and a solo exhibition in 2011, during which he sold seven paintings and featured on BBC South News. Over the past few years, David has organised small exhibitions in Brighton and regularly features in the Big Issue’s art section. “I start with research, before making sketches and writing ideas down,” he says of his process. “I have been inspired by nature and the death of my father. As I get older, my work is inspired by simpler things. My art has allowed me to be a stronger person.”

David is now an Ambassador for Outside In, supporting and promoting the project at various events across the country.

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Arts feature

Outside In Since its inception, Outside In has engaged more than 5,000 artists traditionally excluded from the mainstream art world, 170,000 audience members and 80 partner organisations nationally. It has held over 30 exhibitions and currently supports 2,000 artists digitally on the website.

Additionally, the project is now able to offer an increasingly international platform for the artists it supports, having taken part in the 2014 Paris Outsider Art Fair, and being on the board of the European Outsider Art Association.

The project also offers a training programme called Step Up, through which Outside In artists can learn to be workshop leaders, or can be supported to research and reinterpret works of art from various collections. At present, Outside In has trained over fifty artists through this training programme, leading to voluntary and paid positions. It is hoped this training programme will be rolled out nationally from 2016 onwards.

Outside In would be really keen to hear from anyone who feels they can align themselves with the project. You do not need to have access to the internet to sign up for an online gallery and the chance to submit work to the various regional and national exhibitions. If this is something you would be interested in, please email or write to Outside In using the address at the end of this article. Once you have a gallery on the website, you can enjoy the following benefits:

• The chance to showcase your work alongside 2,000 other artists.

• The opportunity to submit your work for possible inclusion in many regional and national exhibitions.

• A comments section on your page so that you can receive feedback on your work from website visitors. Outside In will send these comments to you via email or letter.

• A unique web address to give to friends and family so that you can share your work

Love Leaks out 2, by David Jones

with them.

• Training via the Outside In: Step Up programme.

Additionally, when you sign up for a gallery, you will be able to submit up to two pieces of work for selection for the next national exhibition, which will take place at Pallant House Gallery from 12 March – 12 June 2016 in collaboration with Craftspace; a crafts development organisation working to push boundaries and perceptions of crafts practice, presentation and learning. Submissions are open to all artists with a gallery on Outside In’s website who produce work that could be classified as ‘craft.’ The category is broad, and submissions are welcome from anyone who considers their work to be a form of craft. This can include pieces made from matchsticks, soap, or other every day found objects. Pieces included in the final exhibition will be chosen by a selection panel. In the exhibition, works

by Outside In artists will be displayed alongside works by historically renowned

and contemporary outsider artists, to put ‘outsider craft’ into context and onto the map. If you would like to submit work for possible inclusion, please write to the address below.

The deadline for submissions is 5pm, Friday 30 October.

Outside In wants to start a ‘gentle revolution’, designed to enable a fairer art world where all who create have an equal opportunity to sit at the table and have their work seen and valued. Marc Steene, Executive Director of Pallant House Gallery and Founder of Outside In, states that “the challenge we are embracing is to reconsider how we define who is and is not an artist, and what is and is not art, in order to change attitudes in the mainstream art world.”

Outside In, Pallant House Gallery, 9 North Pallant, Chichester, PO19 1TJ Website: www.outsidein.org.uk Email: outsidein@pallant.org.uk

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not

Gallery

shut

up

Becky, by Nigel kingsbury

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Untitled 2, by nigel Kingsbury

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AeroplAnes & spAdes, by Manuel Bonifacio

MotorBike & City, by Manuel Bonifacio

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Ball Games, by manuel Bonifacio

Parachutes, By manuel Bonifacio

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BE A NOT SHUT UP CREATIVE WRITER Call-out for participants

Not Shut Up, in collaboration with The

University of East London, are piloting a new distance learning programme in Creative and Professional Writing. Initially, for the purposes of the trial run, it will be aimed at prisoners in London and the South East regions. However, if you are really interested and are based further afield, do contact us and we will see what we can do!

The pilot will consist of a module looking at creative practices for writers. It will explore imagination, creativity and developing and refining your voice as a writer. You will try out different types of writing challenges, in different forms: poetry, shortstory, scripts, creative non-fiction and an academic essay. All successful participants will receive a certificate that details their achievement, while your work can also be published in future issues of Not Shut Up. If the pilot is successful, it will result in a Certificate of Higher Education in Creative and Professional Writing that will be offered nationally. This course will consist of four modules that equate to the first year of an undergraduate degree. Employability and career advice will form part of the programme.

The pilot will take place over 24 weeks (part time). There are 12 writing activities, plus two assessed coursework assignments; a

portfolio of the writings with a reading journal and a revised piece of writing with a short reflective essay. The course teachings and tutor feedback will come by post with a tutorial by visit towards the end of the programme. Your tutor for this pilot will be Anna Robinson, our Poetry Editor.

To do the pilot module, you will need to be sentenced, have at least 6 months of your sentence to complete when the course starts in September, and have level 2 literacy. The pilot will start in September 2015 and all participants will be able to take the rest of the modules if and when the programme commences in full.

For further information and to apply contact the Prisoners’ Education Trust, who are funding the places on the course, via your Education Department.

Prisoners’ Education Trust, Lower Ground Floor Wandle House, Riverside Drive, Mitcham, Surrey CR4 4BU

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Life writing

DYSLEXIA & CREATIVITY

Snowdonia, by alou

by anonymous, HMP Full Sutton

D

uring my induction at HMP Full Sutton, I had the pleasure of meeting the writer in residence Gerry Ryan. She introduced me to her projects, groups and creative arts activities, so I submitted my apps and joined in with as much as possible.

As part of the Prison Reading Group, we choose a book every month which is very kindly supplied by Roehampton University - home of the Prison Reading Groups organsiation. One such author we chose to read was Alistair Fruish, who is the writer in residence at HMP Leicester and the author of the cult hit book “Kiss My ASBO”.

The organisation English PEN funded his visit and a set of books, and for both we are all very grateful.

“Kiss My ASBO” is an interesting read in a very unusual genre (‘Grime Fiction’ as Alistair coins it). It follows the story of a young lad - who’s “Nuthampton bornunbred” - and who’s been spiked with an intelligence pill by his shady Uncle Vic. With unexpected, and often laugh out loud, results. The use of colloquial language throughout the book is what makes this novel really stand out and reading it

becomes something of a lyrical experience.

It might not be for everyone - it takes work to tune into it, but tune into it you will, and it’s worth the effort. Alistair Fruish is a true wordsmith as well as a storyteller.

During our discussion with Alistair we were stunned by his disclosure that he is dyslexic. Without a doubt a few people in that room were dyslexic, but we could never have imagined Alistair would be one of us.

Suddenly a door opened for us all. Alistair told us when he found out (relatively late) he was dyslexic, rather than see it as some sort of disability or disadvantage he CHOSE to see it as “interesting”. He experimented with strategies - he learned to touch type, juggle, ride a unicycle. All of these, amazingly, helped him improve his

grasp on words and language. So he decided to become a writer. He gives himself rules and challenges when he writes to take his focus away from the anxiety of spelling, so for example he’s now writing a novel using only monosyllabic words. He crafts and crafts his work with, I reckon, way more attention to detail than the writers who might take the ability of chucking words and language on the page for granted. This is what takes his writing and creativity to a whole new level and this is how he inspired a roomful of cons back in January. Dyslexia doesn’t have to be a barrier, it can open a whole new door to creativity.

Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that mainly affects the way people read and spell words. Dyslexia is a spectrum disorder, with symptoms ranging from mild to severe. People with dyslexia have particular difficulty with: phonological awareness, verbal memory, rapid serial naming and verbal processing speed. As well as national dyslexia charities, such as Dyslexia Action and the British Dyslexia Association (BDA), there are several local dyslexia associations (LDAs). These are independently registered charities that run workshops and help to provide local support and access to information.

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Fiction

BLOODY FIELDS

by David Rickerby

You may remember last year we interviewed a former bank robber turned writer, now living on the streets of Denmark, about his life as a vagabond and artist. His crowdfunded book, Bloody Fields, has now been published – you can read a second extract from it below. Here we meet our main character deep into a plot to burgle his employer and make off with a local policewoman. Murder might also be on the cards. And the seduction of a bank teller...

W

e stepped up the pace, work wise, as the end of season approached and Elena and I didn’t get much time together. Stine picked up that slack admirably.

No, not sexually. Miss Hansen had made it crystal clear, that was never going to happen, the whole ‘workplace relationship’ thing. I meant companionship, which was good, because we had shit to do. Modern technology is all very well, but, sometimes you needed to go face to face. Though I was curious, about the options available.

“So, who do you hang out with on your free time, if not with your colleagues. I mean, you’re a cop, so who the hell do you get to meet apart from criminals and cops?”

“Elena,” she replied, “isn’t the only lonely, attractive girl in the area.”

To be a lesbian in udkants danmark, (outsider Denmark) must be wretched.

“How the hell, do you keep that quiet?

I’m not getting the feeling, that alternative lifestyles receive tolerance, never mind

respect around here.” I was intrigued, if she can keep that covered up, murder shouldn’t be a problem.

“You can only notice what you see, and only see what you’re looking for. It would never occur to the local men that their women are spending an excessive amount of time with ‘The Girls’,” she explained.

“I can see that, but, you still have one problem.”

“You need a boyfriend, before you can get him not to notice?” she asked.

“Exactly, and I can’t see you having one around, whilst doing something like this.” I’ve found even the least suspicious of partners tend to pick up on homicidal character traits. Mine always did.

“It’s not only girls who need to be careful.”

To be a lesbian, that’s got to be hard.

The aggravation you’d receive for being homosexual, that could make you suicidal.

“Love not easy to find on the Jylland heaths, then?”

She smiled at the sarcasm, “Not true love, not your hearts desire,” she replied.

“I guess that’s why bestiality is legal is DK.” “Which is exactly what you’d be doing without Elena,” the lady cop teased.

“No honey, pigs squeal on you, and, sheep are baaaad.” I smiled back.

“You’re disgusting.”

She seemed quite shocked, though fuck knows if she was. I’m not good at working out if women are ever genuinely outraged.

It’s too rare an occurrence, for one thing.

Joan was trying to keep it together, not wanting to take a shotgun to his co-workers and redecorate the cellar with Gypsy blood, before he got paid and back home, we’d agreed to meet in Barcelona in the New Year. I could have cheered him up with the news of the impending violent death or imprisonment of the whole house, but I felt his joy would be to great to hold in and I didn’t want him tipping off the Gypsy Kings.

I’d finished cutting branches and spent a couple of days on the Christmas trees with his Danish workers, but Jens told me I was

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Fiction

no longer required. I wondered if he’d got suspicious, but no, he just didn’t need me, though he said I could stay on until the end, take care of stuff, do laundry and he paid me.

“If you have laundry, just take it to the house.” he told me, “Elena will do it for you.”

I was wondering if I’d get a chance to look at the house, before I broke in. Plans are ok, but I also like to work from personal knowledge. A walk-through in daytime is always good.

“Grab a shower if you need one,” Jens offered.

Cool, I get to go upstairs, naked in the house with his wife. It’s easy to be suspicious, thinking no-one could be that stupid, but they can. Hubris though is a failing, professionally as well as personally.

I arranged to come around in the morning, before then I had a call to make.

“What’s up?”

“Are you sure that Jens doesn’t know or even suspect?”

“About you and Elena?” Stine said. “No, nothing why?”

I told her what Jens had offered, “I’m just having problems believing anyone can be this stupid.”

She laughed, “He doesn’t even know about Elena and I, and that’s being going on for two years.”

“You sure?”

“I’ve bugged his phone, car and his favourite seat in the bodega. Believe me, if he was suspicious, I’d know, we’d know.

Relax, he’s exactly what you think he is.”

“A fat dumb farmer with a whore for a wife, who’s providing refuge for a gang of thieves and is about to be seriously ripped off?”

Laughing, Stine replied, “Exactly, so stop worrying. What’s happening your end?”

I filled her in, “It’s all good. You ready?”

“Just tell me when and its ‘Glædelig Jul røvhuller, du er anholdt’” (Merry Christmas asshole, you are under arrest).

“I love it when a policewoman talks dirty.”

A few days before the end, I had some business to attend to. Though, it wasn’t the nearest town, I decided to go to Ringkøbing.

I was in the bank, but didn’t recognise the cashier until I got to the counter.

“Hello again.”

Shit. It was library woman.

“Hello again,” I answered back, “I need to send money back to the UK.” “I can do that,” she replied and did so.

Ok, this was now a problem, and she definitely hadn’t and wasn’t going to forget me. I’d been recognised and was on camera, a few days before a major score, which was going to attract major attention; normally I would cancel. I doubted that was an option here, after all it wasn’t my score.

I had serious doubts that Miss Hansen would accept my reasoning, and major reservations about how she would solve the problem.

“So”, I asked as we finished, “Where’s a good bar and restaurant in this town?” She recommended a couple of places. “Sounds good, but, its boring eating alone.”

“Are you inviting me out?”

“If you can get a baby sitter.”

“Not my baby, my sisters.”

“Well, unless you have a black belt in karate boyfriend, you’ll know where I’ll be, you know I’m a gentleman, and,” I added possibly the deciding factor, “you know how much I can spend.”

She laughed, “Maybe”.

You never sit with your back to the door.

You always want to see who is coming in, but you also don’t want to be looking at the door. It may not necessarily be suspicious, many an anxious date stares at the door, but it is noticeable and I don’t like to be. So, when a smartly dressed young lady walked in, I noticed her over the top of my book, and got up to greet her. As I did so, she noticed me and smiled.

“Looking good,” I said nodding to the new blouse she was wearing.

“Oh, this?”, she carelessly replied. “Been laying in my wardrobe for weeks,” she said as she sat down.

Lying cow. I’d seen the same item in the

window of Butik S on Nygade, and it wasn’t cheap. Her name was Tania and she was on praktik (Work experience) at Jyske Bank.

“I work mostly as relief staff in the smaller branches. If you’re willing to work smaller branches, you can pretty much go where you want,” she told me.

“You should ask for Samsø”, I suggested.

“Why?” I explained about the hundreds of hardworking, hard-partying foreigners, the beauty of the Island and not forgetting the hard core rocking of Samsø festival, Big Fat Snake & D.A.D were on the line up for next year.

She was surprised, “I didn’t realise there was so much happening.”

“We only share it with special people,” I explained.

She didn’t object to being called special, no false modesty with this girl. Good, I hate coy, and women who think you’re either being ‘nice’ or spinning a line if you pay them a compliment. Sorry, if you’re a babe then you’re a babe. It’s an objective empirical fact and I can say it with no ulterior motive.

I missed the last bus home.

The greatest hindrance to witnesses coming forward is the risk factor. If Tania suspected I was involved in a crime, given her job it wouldn’t impress her bosses that she’d been intimate with a thief. And I could prove intimacy, I’m not a big fan of camera phones but as she slept I took a few pictures.

I sent them later with the message, ‘You’re innocent when you sleep:)’ She texted back, ‘Bad Boy:)’ Oh honey, I thought to myself, you have no idea.

Well, not yet you don’t!

You can order a copy of David’s book via www.arnoldbusck.dk

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Not Shut Up Academy

PhiliP’s Birthday, by alou

This is the most unimportant election in British history

By Cliff Hughes It doesn’t matter who you vote for. It doesn’t matter who wins, we’ll still get the same old crap: a degraded NHS, cuts in services, higher taxes, exploited minorities, richer rich, poorer poor. Since Blair, all the parties have been converging into a kind of homogenous morass of corruption.

Like putrescence from all over a sick body gathers in one place to form a boil – throbbing, full of puss, waiting to explode and spread its vile stench everywhere.

The similarities between the present day parties far outweigh their differences.

They’re all friends, no matter what they say. All those words mean nothing. Think of pro-wrestling. They’re all in the business of deception and they really don’t want to hurt each other. We’re the dupes.

All the party leaders express concern about immigration in one way or another.

The only way to prevent tragedies like mass drownings in the Mediterranean is to selflessly devote ourselves to improving the economic conditions of those poorer countries until they are on a par with the western power-nations or, as my ex calls

them, the Fat Cat Countries. We shouldn’t see immigrants as a threat to anything; we shouldn’t exploit them by plundering their doctors, engineers, scientists, nurses and other skilled workers. Nor should we exploit their unskilled masses to do low-paid menial jobs. But we do. And every political party is too scared to do anything about it.

POLITICS IS THE ART OF BREAKING PROMISES. (They were disingenuous promises in the first place).

Politics is prevarication. Despite all the bellowing, POLITICS IS THE ART OF DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Nothing that will upset the comfortable, richly-rewarded lives of the politicians,

that is, lives filled with nothing but endless bragging about how much they have achieved already and what they are going to do next – or what they would do if only the previous administration hadn’t fucked everything up.

You think you have democracy? Think again. Mrs. Pankhurst must be turning in her grave. Like the Roman Empire (and the British, come to that), the seeds of our cherished democracy’s destruction were sowed from within.

You can always trust a politician...to do what is in his/her own best interests.

And never more.

Cliff Hughes was born in Sussex in 1956. His family emigrated to New Zealand when he was a baby and he went to school there, returning to England when he was eleven.

He got involved with poetry and other forms of writing through Koestler and Not Shut Up, after a spell in prison. Cliff has lived alone in London since 2013, after a thirty year experimental cohabitation with humans finally proved unsuccessful.

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03/06/2015 22:29

Live Literature

HOME FROM HOME Poetry bringing communities together

GROUNDation Poetry Project (GPP) is inspired by the success of our first ever spoken word affair ‘GROUNDation I: Poetry for the People’ which took place in 2013 at the Lost Theatre. In the lead up to the event, we ran one poetry workshop in HMP Wandsworth led by rapper and spoken word artist Ty, and one in the local community led by poet, performance artist and writer, Dean Atta.

GPP 2015 is a greatly expanded second iteration, commissioned by HMP Wandsworth, involving a series of poetry workshops, led by renowned poets John Hegley, Joelle Taylor, Maria Jastrzębska, Ty, Dean Atta, Sara Hirsch, Kayo Chingonyi and Anthony Anaxagorou, running both in HMP Wandsworth’s library and various locations in the local Wandsworth community.

Participants were those new to poetry through to those who study it, with the workshops helping to enhance creative writing skills, literacy, public speaking and performance skills. We worked with older people at the Katherine Low Settlement, creative writing students at London Southbank University and Roehampton University, and a cross-section of Wandsworth residents at South Thames College.

The end of the project was marked by ‘GROUNDation II: Poetry, Power, People’ on Wednesday 4th March 2015 in HMP Wandsworth, bringing together participants from the outside and inside in a creative exchange of the work they crafted in the workshops. They also

shared the work with an audience of family members, prison staff, academics, funders and invited guests from the general public. Assumptions and perceptions were challenged; new ways of communicating established and most importantly poetry, expression and change were all celebrated.

This limited edition handcrafted book of poetry, featuring the work of participants is a result of Safe Ground’s commitment to creating lasting legacies in all of its work. A further two workshops inspired and led by Marek Kazmierski (Editor of Not Shut Up magazine), again inside and outside of the prison, bringing practical paper crafting skills, alongside design, production and business skills, saw groups of poetry workshop participants coming together to physically make 200 limited edition books.

By binding their experiences together this publication not only extends the life of the project but also makes the voices of men in prison and those of Wandsworth’s local communities accessible to a wider audience.

Safe Ground and the GROUNDation Poetry Project would like to thank HMP Wandsworth, The Goldsmiths’ Company and Wandsworth Council’s Community Learning Development Fund for their generous support of this programme.

Obinna Nwosu, Fundraising and Communications Director, Safe Ground, PO Box 11525, SW11 5ZW www.safeground.org.uk

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03/06/2015 22:38

Poetry performances and book-binding workshops at HMP Wandsworth and Katherine Low Settlement Centre

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04/06/2015 08:00

Safe Ground Poetry

Closer to home / First Christmas Ikamara Larasi

“Do you want to have Christmas this year?”

My Mother’s simple question lit fireworks in my mind.

“Are you serious?” I replied.

In my 19 years we never had Christmas. ’08 became the year the house in OC had it’s first tree.

Our house. We delighted in decorating it with fairy lights and other pretty things.

Several families became one at 157.

1+5+7 at 157.

At last 157, sorrel flowers washed and boiled.

Family recipes, to be closer to home.

Arms ache from grating cheese for the mac, served with rice and peas, dal, salad, hard food, stuffing and other stuff.

House cleaned from top to bottom to welcome those who needed to feel closer to home.

Bustling, bargaining for yam, green banana and other food from back home.

Way back home.

My brother, cousins and I welcomed my first boyfriend to the children’s table.

Untitled

by Kai Larasi

The consistency of the dough is key.

It unlocks the potential of what is ordinary.

Water, salt and plain flour.

Daddy was just naturally working his art while he explained this to me. I was amazed at the levels to his craft.

His hand stayed clean while mine seemed to be covered in art.

He would laugh and say “Don’t worry, I blame your Mum” and break a dumpling to make me try some.

I was the food critic.

Years later, and I’m still an addict.

I will make it when I can, still with the art on my hand, but it tastes so good so I’m good.

Making it myself is bliss. Imagine being able to sustain the moment of joy you get when you bite into your favourite food and you know it bangs.

I’m free to make that good food when I want, so Lord knows when the house is empty a fat munch is about to take place… after I clean the art off my hands.

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03/06/2015 22:41

Sky

Old Photographs

He looked into a Byzantine sky – of a white mosaic Gothic – naked and glistening Renaissance – powder blue Baroque – of brown wool 18th Century – sapphire Impressionist – heavy with air Art Nouveau – wavering Cubist – sharp-edged Abstract – unreal and wanted to believe in a totally new light and incomplete, as yet unused heaven

only photographs don’t have to deal with time this one showing Grandma as a starved-thin girl with spring on the reddened branches of a willow her toys from half a century ago and sparrows like leaves her plait as faithful as her very own guardian angel her skipping rope like truth free of tears and partings you see photographs like saving children the most preferring smiles to acutely dogmatic skies along with a heart which was discreetly late they show us holidays a ruthless summer the meeting with a dog between wheat and lambs especially as life is fleeing like a rogue balloon and a snail slithers with its homeless home a stone with royal features not yet turned to stone outside a mansion which burnt down slim-hipped sisters joking around although watches cry on their wrists the memory of sixth grade cooling like a young pearl the headmaster like an innocent mammal in the middle he died without being resurrected so as to go like a man the pond as weathered as a topaz and a gifted toad when the goldfinch leaves the orchard for the fields even the grasses always seem to twist into hay landscapes long ago turned into geography and eyes too large now to be able to despair

The Close and the Distant For you see, there are people who love and have to meet to pass each other by close and distant as if caught inside a mirror they write letters to each other burning and cold falling apart like flowers discarded in a fit of laughter just to in the end have no idea how it all happened and there are others who even the dark can’t hide from each other but they will pass each other by because they’re too shy to stop as pure and as calm as if snows had started they would be perfect only they lack a few flaws the close fear being close so as not to come apart some die – which means they already know that love is not to be looked for it is or it is not none of us are lonely by accident and there are those who love for ever and it is only then they know they can’t be together like pheasants who cannot move but in pairs one can even get lost for on the other side our cut up roads come together once more

All three poems by Anonymous, HMP Wandsworth, translated

by Marek Kazmierski

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03/06/2015 22:41

Reaside Writing

Writing begets writing As part of the Occupational Therapy Programme at Reaside Mental Health Unit, Gemma Venmore and Amy Forrest facilitate a Creative Writing Group. All the work attached is from a mixture of experienced and people new to writing.

“We started a Creative Writing Group due to having two service users who love writing. This has now morphed into a Recovery College Group, which means the sessions are co-facilitated, co-lead and co-evaluated by service users.

We have five regular attendees, who have a range of writing styles ranging from poetry and short stories to dark comedy featuring gore!

One of our group facilitators attended a Creative Writing Course for Mental Health Professionals running groups, ran by published authors Mandy Ross and Polly Wright as part of Writing Begets Writing, which followed on from Reading for Wellbeing, an initiative encouraging reading out loud to promote mental health. As part this, here at Reaside, the author William Gallagher joined us for two sessions. The service users loved this, and really valued a published writer taking time to come and meet them.

Neither myself nor Amy are experienced in creative writing, so at times it can seem daunting!! However, service users simply wanted a space to come and share their work, learn new skills, but mostly to have fun!! It’s fantastic to witness service users growing in confidence in sharing their work with the rest of the group, working together, learning from each other, and becoming more confident in their own writing abilities.”

Gemma Venmore

Reaside walls

By R.C

Beyond these Reaside walls I see A picture of what used to be.

I lived at home with my dearest Mum, And all I had and known are gone.

A fire that started when I became unwell is where my darkest dreams now dwell.

I find these walls just bring me down, I have become a darkened clown.

I face another endless day, feeling redemption so far away.

I pray to God for hope inside, so one day I can rise with pride.

I yearn for that day to come along, And let me hear new freedom’s song.

The last day

By R.C

After three days, I awoke to the sound of thunder.

The world had descended into the wars of the un-dead.

It seems incredible that our lands have been destroyed

by Zenon gas, an experimental chemical that has the effect of bringing back the recently dead to life.

The plague spread from person to person, just nearing an infected victim could transmit the gas.

Soon whole cities fell; there were no more wars, no more soldiers, just starvation, freezing temperatures, solitary pain and death that was not quite death.

The sound of the military air strike teams and gunfire haunts my waking days and darkest dreams.

I hear more shells, the thunder roaming, apoplectic lands scorched by radiation, lightning searching vacant valleys.

And though I no longer fear death, the survivors who live on live in fear of those who don’t speak, of the dead.

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04/06/2015 20:22

Champion

by Nathan

Chapter 1: Fight night Anderson Rogers. The most brutal champion that has ever walked the face of the earth in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

15 fights, 15 wins, all by knockout. Guess what? He has his next fight coming up tonight with another explosive, mean fighter – me, Danny Smith, the number one contender. Anderson Rogers or Angry Anderson, the name he goes by in the cage, is known for the knockout power of his right hand and his deadly combinations. I am more of a laid back kind of fighter. Anderson is in it for both the money and his reputation; he takes pride in what he does.

As I got to the arena, holding six thousand people, and entered the changing room, nothing was going to hold me back. After getting changed, I walked past the crowds, shadow boxing as I moved towards the ring. The other fighter was waiting. The crowd chanted “Angry Anderson!”. The referee introduces us and then it’s time. My record was 14 wins and 7 loses - his record smashed mine. “You ready? Fight!” Instantly, Anderson runs towards me, swinging his right hand to throw a hook, which connects with my jaw, knocking me to the canvas. He smiles looking at me like he wants me dead.

“Fight!” shouted the referee again. A bit shocked, I decide to play it safe, backing away, but there comes time where you can’t run, not for ever. He corners me, gets me trapped, edges closer and throws his deadly right hand again, this time missing me by inches.

I retaliate by throwing my own combo in his face, a left and right hook followed by an uppercut. The crowd goes wild and stand on their feet. Anderson backs off, and I manage to get a smile in too.

He comes back for more. This time I miss every combo I throw.

His head work is amazing, I’ve never seen nothing like it, so I back off slowly, trying to get my breath back. He then comes forward fakes a punch and goes for a double leg take down. Dragging me to the canvas, he transitions to the mount, which has him right on top of my chest and stomach. I’m going to take a good beating from

here, I know it. He throws his clenched fists down which land on my nose, which then starts bleeding. After taking a few more shots to the face that felt like mini bombs, the ref shouts “Time!”.

Round 2 and Anderson is not hurt at all, not a mark from where I hit him, almost like he had rubber skin. He runs forward, jumps into the air with his knee aimed towards my chin! The pain and shock of it drops me yet again to the floor. Anderson smiles and then throws a few leg kicks to my shin. I see him coming forward, throwing a left and right hook combo, stunning me a bit. Dazed, I grit my teeth against the mouth guard and keep my chin down, coming forward. I manage to catch him with a right hook. He finally wobbles. I must have hurt him, so I follow with a combination of right hook and right uppercut. His mouth piece comes flying out and I kick him continuously in the legs, throwing hooks to his face. I almost have him finished off, his face all bruised and cut open, when the round ends!

“Right! Go in there when the round starts and finish the job,” says my coach. I look over at my opponent, he can barely sit on his stool. Anderson looks terrible.

Round 3 and the time is now, I know it. I run over to Anderson, determined to end the fight the old way by knockout, but the fatal mistake I make is my chin is up and my guard down. Just as I am about to deliver the knockout, he counters with a jab and then finishes off with a knee to the face. I collapse to the canvas, in shock as much as pain. The ref instantly stops the fight, though I can’t actually remember even hitting the floor.

After waking up, I congratulate him and walk over to the middle of the cage, where the ref announces “And the winner and still heavyweight champion of the world is – Angry Anderson Rogers!” Though I know, with my hand high up in empty air, who is really angry now.

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04/06/2015 20:22

Arts Roundup

The latest news and reviews from the world of contemporary art, by Lucy Edkins

Lucy Clout From Our Own Correspondent

What will they see of me? ‘‘What Will They See of Me?’ alludes to the pressures (and perils) of visibility in a digital world, where images of the self are routinely circulated and exchanged, but also reflects underlying insecurities about personal identity and, beyond that, wider anxieties about what we might be leaving behind for posterity.’

JerwoodFVUawards.com Winners of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2015, Lucy Clout and Marianna Simnett premiered their new moving image works in ‘What Will They See of Me’ at the Jerwood Space in April. Both artists consider how images of the self are rehearsed and relayed for others.

A 2013 Slade Art School graduate working with video and drawing, Marianna Simnett explores themes of sexuality, innocence, corruption and martyrdom in

her recent body of work. Her videos involve collaborative processes with non-actors portraying themselves in heightened, suspended reality. An exploration of the rites of passage, “Blood” follows the imaginative journey of a girl who is having a nose operation against the backdrop of Albanian mountains.

A 2009 Royal College of Art Sculpture School graduate, in previous work Lucy Clout explored the affective potential of personal screens and online encounters, focusing on the screen as the site of performance. In “From Our Own Correspondent” Clout interviews women journalists, including the humorously banal; for instance, when she asks the interviewee to clear the desk of her plastic water bottle and papers. We gain insight into the techniques and personalities of the interviewers, intercut with stylised images

of a woman lying on a bed against a cityscape of changing colour. The shape of the woman resembles the soft furnishings of a carseat.

Disconnected shots of the woman sitting half dressed on her hotel bed nodding to an imagined interviewee and sitting on the bed in the same room as the interviewer being interviewed give us an uncanny feeling of intimacy and sense of the ridiculous present in the interview setup.

The Jerwood/FVU Awards 2015:‘What Will They See of Me’, were a collaboration between Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Film and Video Umbrella (FVU) in association with CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow and University of East London, School of Arts and Digital Industries. FVU is supported

by Arts Council England.

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04/06/2015 20:32

Arts Roundup

Forensics: The Anatomy of crime ‘Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime’ in the newly designed exhibition space at the Wellcome Collection guides us through the various stages of scientific and legal analysis, alongside artists’ responses to extreme acts of violence. Encouraging us to examine our fascination with death and war, this thorough and intriguing exhibition ‘reminds us of the human body’s extraordinary capacity to leave traces beyond death and disappearance.’ – Ken Arnold, Wellcome Collection Room 1 is dedicated to the crime scene; ‘Nutshells,’ wealthy socialite Frances Glessner Lee’s tiny doll house replicas of domestic murder scenes, created in the 1950’s to help facilitate detailed analysis, subverted the notion of the home as a safe haven. Teresa Margolles presents a square of the tiled floor her friend was killed on; in her

‘Evidence’ series artist Angela Strassheim uses luminol photography and Blue Star to show the haunting traces of domestic crimes committed often many years ago.

Room 2 examines the morgue (from the French morguer, “to stare”), Room 3 the laboratory and Room 4 takes us on the search for evidence: in the centre of this darkened space you can walk into Šejla Kamerić’s ‘Ab uno disce omnes’, a large steel fridge, to view the 30,000 pieces of evidence gathered during the Bosnian conflict showing on a loop; at one end of the room, Patricio Guzmán’s film shows a lone person searching for answers to the disappearances in the dry landscape of Pinochet’s Chile, whilst at the other end a table of bones reminds us of our own mortality.

The penultimate room is dedicated to the antics and dramas of the courtroom and before we leave, a space is dedicated to ‘The

Innocents’, artist Taryn Simon’s response to the “Innocence Project” in the USA in 1992 (which overturned 300 unsafe convictions after the development of DNA research) in which she photographed many of the exonerated men in the place of their arrest (eg, Larry Mayes was found hiding under a mattress) or at the scenes of crimes they were wrongly placed at.

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04/06/2015 20:33

Xxyxyx xyxy

I am the 3rd person observing the bad marriage between art and life watching the pose and the slip seeing the end in the beginning’

lEaving thE faMiliar shorEs of nEw York, by lucy Edkins

Marlene Dumas ‘Couples’, 1990

Image As Burden In ‘Image As Burden’, this large retrospective of Marlene Dumas spanning 14 rooms at the Tate Modern, we enter to a wall of graphite and ink portrait ‘Rejects’ from another work portraying the ‘perfect’ model. At first, en masse, the faces appear ugly and distorted, but after reading about them, you look a little closer and they start to appear beautiful.

Dumas describes her work as using 2nd hand images (snapshots, magazine & newspaper photographs, later stills from films) and firsthand experience.

She responds to the endless currency of images by grabbing and blowing some up to larger formats in order to abstract and comment on them, showing them in all their starkness. She attempts to bring back subjectivity to the objectified – in ‘Black Drawings’, she combines black India ink drawings of African American fashion models and postcard photographs of Africans taken by colonialists – exploring ‘our conception of what happens to the individual when seen as part of a group’.

In reaction to recent laws there, when invited to show in a Russian exhibition in 2014, Dumas created a series of drawings shown here of ‘Great Men’, taking gay men

Evil is banal, by Marlene Dumas

as its subjects with short bios and quotes written beneath, eg, Vietnam vet Leonard Matlovich (1943-88): ‘They gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.’

Interested in the public display of nudity and the reasons given to justify or banish

it, in ‘Magnetic Fields’ Dumas describes her work as ‘the pornographic tendency to reveal everything and the erotic inclination to hide what it’s all about’; she asks ‘Can pin-ups survive in a pornographic age?

Somehow, just like marriage and prisons, they do.’

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04/06/2015 20:32

Opinion

No Divide

By Eve McDougall

W

hen people are incarcerated, this is a punishment: the sentence, i.e. loss of freedom, and now another added punishment – not being allowed to vote. I have been in that position myself, and where does my vote go? Does it go to the present leader, leaving me no choices? Austerity is a big con, a loophole of a word, a disabling excuse to cover up the criminality that occurred through political leaders’ greed and incompetence, but they’re not the ones in jail, yet.

Political parties have deceived us for far too long. All they have done is take, take, take; they make the poor poorer, the ill more ill, and the rich richer… like themselves. What happened to the truth?

My Granddad used to say to me, ‘The truth in the eyes of politics becomes an untruth, they twist and bend it to suit their needs, honesty and trust have lost their way.’

There are 90,000 inmates in our jails today and many people think prison should be about rehabilitation; a place to create opportunities for healing and personal transformation, otherwise absent in the often highly dysfunctional and damaged lives of many prisoners.

If voting rights were given to UK prisoners, politicians would have to take the rights, needs and interests of some 90,000 inmates more seriously. They would need to canvas inside prisons for votes and listen to the voices of the wide range of citizens we have behind bars. Part of this canvassing could involve a genuine focus on the long-term rehabilitation of the individual. This in turn could lead to reduced reoffending rates – and maybe, just

ElEanora, by alou

maybe, a society with fewer criminals and fewer prisoners.

We must not confuse a criminal conviction and subsequent removal from society (an often essential part of the process of rehabilitation) with a need to remove the essential human right to vote. This was the basis of the recent EU decision to insist that the UK gives the vote to its prisoners. Europe has had a wide and varied response to the issue: Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland have no ban on prisoner voting rights, while in 13 other European countries, electoral disqualification depends on the crime committed or the length of the sentence.

Now that I am free and have the choice to vote, I don’t have much faith in our leaders or even trust any of them. Where does that leave me? If the truth is spoken, I will hear it, know that it is genuine, and then I can decide where my vote goes.

Words Words that have been twisted, turned, bent Blown in a deceitful wind Blossoming from the smiles as they kill A privileged platform trampled with conceit Clinking glasses @ champagne dinners Honesty, trust, truth have lost their way Gimmickry and bribes The truth is drowning Trampled, trashed, divided No accountability, no correctness or connectedness Words trashed, twisted, turned, and bent Twisted, turned, bent

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04/06/2015 20:35

Fiction

Fairies in the Top Field Part 1

by Adam Mac

A modern mystery fairytale, for the young and old – Part 1 published below, to whet your appetites and get your imaginations going – how do you think Part 2 will end? Look out for the next issue of Not Shut Up to find out!

I

’d just managed to focus on the pillar of papers that had grown from my in tray when my phone started to vibrate, hammering it’s way across my desk.

‘Hello. Is that Miss Clark?’

The man on the other end had a typical countryside drawl and I recognised the voice but couldn’t place it.

‘Speaking.’

‘It’s Tom. Tom Henry? I help your dad out on the farm.’

It wasn’t a farm. It was a small holding.

And it struggled to be that.

‘Oh, hi,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Well, I think you better come down here for a bit. It’s your dad. He’s had a bit of a fall and he’s not doing so good.’

The room started to shrink around me and the air refused to fill my lungs. I felt like I was drowning.

‘What? What happened? Where is he?’ I gripped the edge of the desk, ready for bad news.

‘He’s at home still. He refused to go to the hospital. Kept saying he couldn’t leave the farm or the fairies would steal it.’

‘Sorry? He said what?’

‘I know. But I got the doctor out and he said he’ll be alright with a bit of rest, as long as he doesn’t do any work on the farm. He just needs someone to keep an eye on him.’

‘Right.’ I was glad he was going to be alright, but I knew what was coming and my tiny world began to slow as I searched my head for a pre-emptive excuse.

‘I mean, I can take care of the farm until he’s back on his feet, but he really needs his family, you know?’

I fought really hard to find the words I needed. I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t go anywhere. Work was just too hectic. But I especially couldn’t go there. I looked around the room frantically, searching for my lost dog and the word’s he’d stolen.

‘The thing is, Tom, I don’t know if I can

get away from work. It’s crazy up here and I think that the best thing for Dad is that he keeps his routine. You understand, don’t you? So if you could just check in on him a couple of times a day, I’m sure he’ll be fine.

How does that sound?’ I held my breath, waiting for an answer.

‘Um, actually I said the same, but the doctor said he has to have someone with him at night too and, well, he asked for you himself.’

‘The doctor asked for me?’

‘No. Your dad.’

It was impossible. He’d never have asked for me. We hardly spoke.

‘Can you stay with him for today? Until nine at least?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Ok. I’ll see you then.’

‘Alright, Miss.’

‘It’s Kate. Call me Kate. And Tom?’ ‘Yes?’

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04/06/2015 20:45

eyes. And then, not above the sound of the tracks, but beyond them, I heard a voice. A familiar voice. A child’s voice. A young boy’s voice.

‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, and four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold, and seven for a secret never to be told.’

And then my eyelids relented and my eyes shot open.

I glanced around the carriage. It was empty. The fluorescent lights had combined with the darkness outside to turn the windows into mirror glass. Only the splashes of raindrops were visible beyond.

I sat and watched the darkness, waiting for something familiar to reveal itself.

DanDelion, by Julio osorio

‘Thanks.’

‘Katie, get in the car.’ I look up at my mum. She looks angry, and so scared. She hasn’t even brushed her hair and it’s all messy at the back.

‘You can’t take her, Laura. She’s my daughter too. If you’re not interested, you leave, but I can’t carry on without her here with me.’ He looks huge. He’s only walking but he’s so fast and strong.

‘I said get in the car, Katie. Now.’ I open the door and climb up onto the back seat, clutching Mr. Babbit hard in one hand and stroking his silk ears with the other.

‘I’m not letting you take her,’ he says.

‘We could still have a good life here. All of us. Together.’

‘Oh, come on, Jack. You know it’s too late for that. I never wanted to come here in the first place. Now, after you, after everything, it’s just too late.’

‘No. If you leave now, if you take her, you’re leaving me behind. Then it’s too late.

You can’t just abandon us. You can’t just abandon our daughter.’

‘She’s gone, Jack!’ She starts to cry. ‘She’s not coming back. And neither are we. If you want to stay here, fine, stay. But me and Katie are leaving. She’s only seven, Jack.

You can’t put this on her. She’s all I’ve got now, and I’m not losing her for your wild ideas too.’

She gets in the car and he just stands there, looking at me and Mr. Babbit.

I turn and wave over the back seat as Mum drives off, but he just stands there, watching. He doesn’t look strong any more.

He just looks lost.

My mind woke up before my body did. I knew I was still on the train, I could hear the shuddering of the tracks below and I could feel the cold glass of the window against my temple, but I couldn’t open my

The rain beat hard as I ran up the driveway to the door, piercing the darkness with my urgency. I had barely slammed the heavy, black knocker before shapes emerged in the window in the door, obscuring the soft orange light, and the door swung open to reveal a tall, well-built man.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘You’re soaked.’

‘Thanks,’ I headed through the door, half-ducking as though that might spare me the last few drops of rain. ‘You must be Tom, right?’

‘Yes. Come on, I’ll get you a towel.’

‘Thanks,’ I said again, following him through to the large kitchen.

It was strange being back there. It had been so long and yet, it felt like I had come home at last. Like something deep inside me was rooted here and that I’d always been drawn back to where I belonged.

I took a seat at the large, round table and looked around. Nothing had changed. The same old Aga, the same heavy stonework surfaces, even the same off white, woodchip paint on the walls. Granted, it had yellowed a bit over the years, but I was surprised I recognised the place at all.

‘Here we are,’ said Tom, returning with a large cream towel.

I took it and dabbed it softly against my face, so as not to smear my make-up any more than it already was, and then ran it gently back over my head along the length

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Fiction

Untitled, by Adam Mac

of my hair. When I was done, I saw that Tom was looking through the cupboards between the Aga and the sink.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ he asked.

‘Please. A brandy would be perfect if you could?’

‘I’m not sure where he keeps the brandy.

I’ll make you a camomile tea. That’ll fix you up.’

Camomile tea. I hated the sheer idea of it. But it didn’t feel like I had much of a choice.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Where’s Dad?’ ‘Oh, he went to bed about an hour ago.

He was tired, so I said I’d wait up for you.’

He took an old steel kettle and filled it with water before placing it directly on the stove and turning up the heat.

‘So how long have you worked here for?

Dad’s never mentioned you.’

‘Really? I’ve been here for years now. He took me on as soon as I was old enough to work.’

‘Did you grow up here?’

‘Yes. I lived up on the other side of the top field.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I was only here a short time and I wasn’t really allowed up that way.’

Tom took two large mugs down from an overhead cupboard just as the kettle began to steam and whistle loudly.

‘Won’t that wake Dad up?’

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘He’s had a big day. He’ll sleep right through, I bet.’

He poured out the drinks, placed the kettle in the sink, and then joined me at the table. I took the mug in both hands, leaning over it as if to warm myself, then I looked at Tom properly for the first time.

He was still in his twenties, but working on the farm seemed to have aged him. He had deep wrinkles around his eyes and dark stubble that was starting to grey slightly on either side of his chin. His hair was a mess.

It was dark and thick, and looked like it had never been combed. It ran in all different

directions and stuck up where it shouldn’t.

But his eyes were soft and kind. They were the deepest blue and they seemed to ripple as I looked into them. He caught my gaze and smiled and suddenly I became very aware that I had been staring.

‘Sorry,’ I said, forcing an exaggerated yawn. ‘I’m knackered. I don’t mean to be unsociable, but I should probably get to bed.’

‘That’s fine,’ he replied. ‘I thought as much. I made up the bed in the back room for you. You know which door it is?’

‘Yeah, thanks. I think that used to be my old room actually.’

‘Ah,’ he laughed. ‘That explains the pink.

I didn’t think that would be Jack’s choice of colour.’

We laughed together and held each other’s eyes silently for a moment.

‘Right then,’ he said. ‘I better be getting back. I’ll be over first thing though, if you need anything.’

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‘Thanks,’ I said as he finished his drink and set the mug back down on the table, rising to leave. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. And thanks for everything, Tom.’ ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

Daddy’s on the barn roof. He’s so high I can only just see him.

‘Please?’ I whine. ‘I’ll be good. I promise.’

‘No, Katie,’ he says. ‘It’s too dangerous and I haven’t got time to watch you today.’

‘But Daddy! I don’t want you to watch me. I’m not a baby any more!’

‘I know, Katie. But big girls can’t always get what they want. You know that.’

‘But Daddy!’

‘No means no, Katie. Now, go and find your mum.’

I don’t want to go and find my mum. I don’t want to stay at the house. I want to play. I walk back towards the house, but I don’t go in. I stop at the garden fence and follow where it goes. When I reach the big oak tree in the corner of our garden I stop and sit for a while, watching the sheep eat their grass in the field.

It isn’t fair. The sheep play in the field all day and they never get hurt. Daddy’s just silly. And soon I get bored and move closer.

The sheep are ok at first. They don’t even make any noise. But every time I get too close they all start bleating and they run away. Then I hear something different.

‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, and four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold, and seven for a secret, never to be told.’

It’s a boy. I can’t see him anywhere, but I can hear him.

‘One for sorrow, two for joy,’ he sings again.

It’s coming from the other end of the field.

‘Three for a girl, and four for a boy.’

He’s hiding somewhere. I still can’t see him, but I’m getting closer.

‘Five for silver, six for gold,’ He’s up by the pond.

‘And seven for a secret,’ I’m close now. But I still can’t see him.

Where is he?

‘Never to be told.’

I could smell the bacon before I even opened my eyes. It had already started burning, I could tell, but it smelled so good I didn’t hesitate to swing out of bed and pull on my dressing gown.

‘Hi, Dad,’ I said as I entered the kitchen.

‘Katie!’ he smiled as he turned towards me, bacon still sizzling in the hot frying pan. He had visibly aged since the last time I saw him. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in about a week and his face was covered in thick, grey stubble. He wore his trademark thick knit blue sweater and a pair of jeans which were frayed at the bottom of each leg.

His eyes were surrounded by deep wrinkles and, even whilst smiling, he had a tortured expression of exhaustion and utter sadness.

I approached slowly and kissed him on the cheek before withdrawing to the dining table on the other side of the room.

‘How have you been?’ I asked.

‘Good,’ he said, scraping the bacon onto three plates already laden with eggs, beans, tomatoes and fried bread. ‘They’re still doing their best to get me out but you know me, I keep on going.’

‘Who, Dad? Who’s trying to get you out?’

Was Tom right? Had it come to this? Was he really talking about fairies now?

‘The folk up over the field. You know.’

I didn’t know whether to be relieved that he hadn’t said what I expected, or concerned that he was thinking that way at all. I just watched him as he hesitated, hovering over the plates, seemingly confused as to why he had three of them.

‘Is Tom joining us?’ I prompted.

‘Tom?’ ‘Tom, Dad. Your farmhand.’

‘Oh, him. Um, yes. Yes, that’s it.’

He brought two of the plates over to the table and set one down in front of me.

‘Thank you,’ I said as he took the seat opposite me.

At that moment, Tom walked in without so much as a knock on the door.

‘Good morning,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How are you both?’

My dad stayed silent.

‘Fine, thanks. All the better for that sleep. The journey down really took it out of me. I think Dad’s made you breakfast.’ I

nodded towards the third plate, over on the sideboard.

‘No!’ my dad snapped. ‘He doesn’t eat here.’

‘He means I don’t eat meat,’ Tom corrected. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Then the other... Never mind.’

I looked up at my dad, but he was shovelling food into his mouth at great speed without even noticing how much was caught in his beard. His brow was tightly furrowed now, giving him an anguished expression.

‘You’re not working today, are you Dad? I mean, Tom can handle things, can’t you Tom?’ ‘Of course,’ Tom said, leaning back against the sink. ‘I’ll take care of everything.

You put your feet up, Jack.’

‘No,’ my dad said with his mouth full, threatening to splutter food across the table.

‘I need to get back to my work.’

‘But shouldn’t you be taking it easy, what with the fall? I thought we might spend some time together.’

‘My fall? I’m fine.’

‘Go on, Jack,’ encouraged Tom. ‘I can handle things.’

‘No,’ he said again. ‘I can’t very well leave you to do as you please. I’ll be with you all day. Where I can keep an eye on you.’

And with that he placed his cutlery on his plate and carried it over to the sink, still chewing wildly with his mouth open. When he reached the sink he saw that Tom was in his way, but neither of them moved. They just stood there, face to face, waiting.

‘Right then,’ Tom said eventually, stepping aside to let my dad past. ‘I had better get started. I’ll speak to you later, Kate, I’m sure.’

‘Bye, Tom,’ I said as he walked out of the door.

‘Dad? Are you ok? I asked once Tom was gone.

‘Yes, Sweetheart,’ he said, turning back to me with a smile on his face. ‘I’m fine.’

The he walked out as if nothing had happened at all. I just sat, looking at the third plate of food going cold on the side.

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Award Winning Writing

Creative Future

Creative Future provide training, mentoring and the chance to publish or exhibit to talented people who lack opportunities due to mental health issues, disability, health or social circumstance. They are based in Brighton and here is a selection of some of their award-winning writing.

My Father

by Sarah Walker

My dearest father spews out bitter words to me.

His anger has completely engulfed him, So that he is tiny and small within it.

He says She lost all rights when she left her marital home.

She talks with a quiet voice, But really she is bad and wrong.

She has everything, how contemptible.

Surely this meeting is over.

One minute he recalls himself as a small boy, Terrified of abandonment, The next, he is spewing out bitter, angry words.

He tells a story of music and friendship, Far away in Palestine.

I remember his dark silences During my years of growing up.

He says Just a minute, I, too, want to speak about my life.

I must speak, I have no brothers or sisters to corroborate my story, So I must speak alone, Otherwise my story will be lost.

The Spark

by Moray Sanders

I saw the whole of the universe erupt when I was seven and three quarters. I still see the electric blues and vivid greens and some colours I’d never seen before. The shapes and the sounds and the smells have seared themselves into my memory, the stars and whirls and roars and the eye watering nostril scorching stench of it and the metal taste of fear.

We all saw it during the annual village party. This was held at Harold Carter’s because he had the longest garden which ran the entire length of the Memorial Hall. After dark we’d troop through his house and out the back. Leaving our parents by the house we’d file up the dim aisle of hunched brassicas and skeletal bean sticks to where Harold Carter stood, a solitary figure waiting to receive our offerings which we laid reverently on the flat lid of an old tin

trunk. We’d retreat quickly to our parents to watch the shadowy figure of Harold bobbing and bowing over our gifts, arranging them in order in the trunk. This was tradition. We knew what to expect.

Whoosh! The first rocket jumped from the ground and powered its wiggling way up and up before stretching into an explosion of coloured stars that fell to earth lighting upturned faces and open mouths and Harold still fussing over the trunk. Then the unexpected happened. Suddenly the universe was created from that old tin box. The world was alight with shapes and sounds. We trembled at its power and in the lurid light we saw Harold sprawled in obeisance by the open lid.

I was seven and three quarters when I stared at the shrieking jaws of hell and saw the stretching hands of heaven and the spark that started the universe.

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English PEN Awards / Readers & Writers

Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lindqvist, translated by Ebba Segerberg Andrew Craigie (HMP Frankland) BOOK REVIEW / RUNNER UP

Probably the most over-represented figure in horror fiction is the suave and sophisticated vampire, and once you have read one you have read them all; not so with John Ajvide Lindqvist’s attempt, which breathes new life into a stale cliche. “Let the Right One In” is not just a horror tale, though it is horrific at times, it is more a dark fairy tale dealing with themes of alienation, abuse and neglect.

Set in 1980s Sweden, the story follows troubled young Oskar, who when we are first introduced is collecting newspaper

clippings of atrocities, and role-playing violent fantasies as a way to deal with schoolyard bullying. The fairytale feel is further enhanced by the snow-deadened estate he lives on, the blocks of flats taking the place of dark crumbling towers.

His sad little world is one day turned upside-down with the arrival of Eli, who moves in next door, melting the snow of young Oskar’s heart, and introducing him to feelings other than anger. Though Eli is no simple love interest, that is part of the role the character serves in a sort of damaged, dysfunctional way.

Both characters, regardless of their flaws, bring pathos and a lost sadness that

is timeless, and speaks to everyone on some level, especially given the current focus of the media on child abuse in its many forms and consequences. If a victim’s ongoing pain can last a lifetime, what if the abuser curses the victim with immortality?

Forced addiction, co-dependency and enabling, concepts and words not usually found in a traditional vampire novel, bring the genre horribly up to date with horrors less tangible than giant bats and werewolves.

All-in-all, a fresh take on an old tale, which blurs the lines between monster and victim.

The strange voyage of Donald Crowhurst by N. Tomalin and R. Hall Gordon Chorlton (HMP Guernsey) BOOK REVIEW /RUNNER UP

November, 2014; a new international yachting competition has just started, a non-stop single-handed transatlantic race. The British television news stations are all reporting on the race and showing interviews with one of the competitors. In the interviews, he is bright and optimistic about the race and says that he was the first person to sail non-stop single-handed around the world when he won the Sunday Times Golden Globe round-the-world race in 1969. He wrote an account of that race in his book, A World of My Own. In 1967.

Sir Francis Chicester had sailed around the world single-handed, in Gipsy Moth IV, faster than anyone else – though he had made one stop.

What is not reported is the story of another competitor from that race.

An unknown amateur yachtsman called Donald Crowhurst, an electronics engineer from Bridgewater, Somerset, entered the race in 1969 in a trimaran called

Teignmouth Electron, and this book tells his extraordinary story first hand using the log books he kept during the whole of his time at sea. That this amateur, who had never entered any major race before and in fact had very little real yachting experience, should even think of going round the world single-handed is incredible and astonishing and has led to some discussion on his mental state. However, he was deemed fit, physically and mentally, and he started the race on 31 October 1968, setting off from Teignmouth Harbour.

In the final days before he set off, his preparations were chaotic. He bought four sets of log books before setting off and when his boat was discovered only three were found. It seems that he had kept a meticulous dual set of log books during his entire voyage and one of these sets is reprinted and analysed here in mesmerising detail. What emerges is as astonishing and poignant as any fiction could possibly be. Crowhurst fools the world into thinking he is circling the globe to win the race by sending false radio

reports of his co-ordinates. He writes one ‘true’ log book – the one reprinted here – and it seems he kept a ‘false’ log book account of his imaginary trip around the world. Fascinating detailed maps and many photos taken by Crowhurst before and during his voyage are included in this book.

This is a fascinating and tragic true story of one man’s battle against the forces of nature and his struggle with his inner self. After sailing over 16,000 nautical miles in seven months alone at sea, battling with his fears and anxieties, he starts to have bizarre, strange and compelling thoughts. Incredibly, he keeps writing in his journals, right up to the very point that his ‘strange voyage’ reaches its awful yet seemingly unstoppable finale.

On 10 July 1969, nine days after Crowhurst’s last navigational log book entry, his boat, The Teignmouth Electron, was found drifting in the mid-Atlantic about 1,800 miles from England. It was completely deserted. This is one of the most haunting and poignant books I have ever read.

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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 5AQ 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 english Pen is the founding centre of a worldwide writers’ association with 145 centres in more than 100 countries. They campaign to defend writers and readers in the UK and around the world whose human right to freedom of expression is at risk.

English PEN, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA 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 50 years.

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

synergy TheATre ProjecT, established in 1999, works towards rehabilitation with prisoners and ex-prisoners through theatre and related activities.

Synergy Theatre Project, 8 St Thomas Street, London SE1 9RR

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.

The reAder orgAnisATion shared reading groups contribute to long-term, sustainable changes to prison reform, offender rehabilitation and offender prevention.

The Reader Organisation, The Friary Centre, Bute Street, Liverpool L5 3LA

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.

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 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 Sheriffs’ & Recorder’s Fund Sir James Roll Charitable Trust Swan Mountain Trust Topinambour Trust Tudor 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 writers 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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Art & Ability

How diffability and the creative arts can draw out the best in all of us

By Nicky Goulder, Co-Founder & Chief Executive, Create

It’s common knowledge that we all have different abilities – different strengths, weaknesses, preferences, tastes. They make us who we are. Why is it then that some of us face exclusion from social and educational opportunities based on these different abilities? It’s less commonly known that children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) are almost 7 times more likely to be permanently excluded from school (and possibly enter the criminal justice system) and are less likely to have attended arts events or participated in arts activities. “Contact a Family” has found that these exclusions (which are often illegal) cause 53% to fall behind with school work and 55% to feel alienated from friendship groups. These are children who may have behavioural or emotional difficulties, have challenges learning to read, write or absorb some types of information as quickly as their peers, their levels of concentration may fluctuate, or they may struggle in certain social situations.

Some children have SEN. All children have different abilities.

Those with SEN should never be discriminated against or stigmatised because of their need for support, nor should an assumption ever be made that a child with SEN can’t do certain things (negative assumptions about ability are consistently cited as a barrier to access). Children have different strengths and different creative abilities and the focus should be on providing every child with the support they need to develop these. Children with SEN can have different strengths and abilities to those without SEN, just as the abilities of children within these groups also vary. The issue is often that a lack of appropriate support for these young people leads to an assumption that they are less able than their non-disabled peers.

This is where the concept of ‘diffability’ can prove useful. In 2003, I co-founded a charity called Create to open up creative

opportunities to people who are disadvantaged or vulnerable.

From the start, a key aim has been to develop participants’ social skills, confidence, self-esteem and friendships. In 2015, we’re still pursuing this goal and in the last 12 years we’ve reached 29,184 people, 7,417 of whom have had SEN/disabilities. Create uses the creative arts as a way of revealing value in everyone’s contributions, thoughts and ideas. By collaborating – whether it’s creating a mural, a film, a piece of music or a dance – people with all kinds of ability can learn about each other and benefit from working together.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts Creating an environment in which everyone can take part and feel respected celebrates diffability, embracing both inclusivity and difference. In the context of the creative arts, people with and without SEN/disabilities can have an equally-valued contribution, because there is not a right or wrong way of doing things. What diffability can do is transcend any imposed divisions between SEN/disabled and non-SEN/non-disabled. Whereas disability is used to describe a condition that stops you from doing something (disempowering), the focus of diffability is on doing things in a different way (empowering).

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Drawing on diffabilities to create art together During September and October last year, Create took its creative:connection programme to six schools in Essex. The programme, which uses the creative arts as an integration tool, paired young people from SEN schools with mainstream schools to create a three-part mural for the local shopping centre, at Lakeside. The students, with a wide range of abilities, were all encouraged to contribute ideas and listen to each other, as is key to Create’s inclusive approach. Beginning with the basic premise of ‘my dragon lost its fire’, the students were tasked to come up with inventive tales of how the dragon had misplaced its fiery essence and the journey it took to find it.

Working with our actor/playwright and

co-founder of Function Theatre, James Baldwin, they imagined stories of the mythical creature exploring the Milky Way and a moon made of jelly, a terrifyingly haunted house, and an underwater world with a watchful sea ogre, before visualising their ideas with modelling clay, charcoal and drawing, in sessions led by our visual artist Vikyi Turnbull.

Each of the three murals tells a story, yet the dragon never appears whole, leaving the viewer the task of discovering signs of its presence. Much like the process of learning, we all see things differently, so this is incorporated into the artistic presentation of the story.

Perhaps one of the more surprising

outcomes of the project was revealed when we spoke to non-disabled students about their experiences of working with young people with SEN. Marissa (not her real name) from The Ockendon Academy said that she had previously felt uncertain about her own abilities but that the positive attitude of the students with SEN had encouraged her to be more accepting of herself: “I’ve got to work with people that I wouldn’t normally talk to. The SEN students from Beacon Hill were a lot more confident than we were, so they inspired us to be confident like them. This has been the first time that I’ve really engaged with people who have disabilities, so I feel like I’ve learnt a lot.”

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STAND UP AND BE COUNTED, by J. Fletcher

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