National Poetry Day at Her Majesty's Pleasure

Two things I like very much - which also happen to coincide - are the Somerset Art Weeks Festival and National Poetry Day. On Thursday I joined with other West Country poets to mark both, by reading poems on the themes of imprisonment and freedom amid the art installations in B-Wing at the now disused HMP Shepton Mallet.

I'd visited the prison back in May, as soon as I was asked to be part of the project. I knew a place like that would have a grim effect on me, so I wanted to make sure it was a familiar grim effect. Although the addition of some very provocative art installations added another layer of challenge. 

So much of the prison already resembles ladders that lead nowhere, even without the addition of new ones. The only clear view, through non-obscured glass, is of the sky ... Oscar Wilde's 'little tent of blue'. 

Dominic Fisher

Poets waiting in cells to read

In addition to our own poems, works by Homero Aridjis, Dennis Brutus, Imtiaz Dharker, Osip Mandelstam, Harryette Mullen, Irina Ratushinskaya, Marina Tsvetaeva and Oscar Wilde were read.  

The delivery of the poems was excellent throughout; the audience intrepid in the face of distinctly chilly conditions. 

Even though I couldn't read it properly, as I was standing behind it, I was impressed by Kate Semple's poem Unheard Prayer, which was unfurled on a banner while the everyday sounds of prison life, hugely amplified by the acoustics of the place, were played. Its point - the inability to escape sensory overload in prison, and the withholding of silence in which to hear yourself think -  was cogently made, and later, when it started to rain and the noise was amplified on the high glass roof, I was reminded of it again.

The poets with organiser Rosie Jackson.

Afterwards we went up to the third floor where some of the poems were on display. They'd been printed on thin paper so that the light shone through them, and looked as frail and beautiful as hope.

Here's Rosie with her poem ... 

... and here's mine.

It might be presumptuous, but I would like to think that a small restitution had been made. 

Jailbirds and the first Swift

On Saturday I ventured down to Somerset. Jan asked where I wanted to visit and I suggested Shepton Mallet Prison (which was the oldest operating prison in the country when it closed in 2013) because I'm going to be involved in an afternoon of readings there on National Poetry Day and I wanted to know what I was letting myself in for. 

So we set off valiantly from her home near Glastonbury, but although we'd been there together back in October, we kept missing the town altogether and ending up in nearby villages with roads too narrow to do a seven-point turn easily. It was really strange.

And then when we did get there, we couldn't find our way to the town centre and spent a long time wandering around the car park. 

We had some lunch in a cafe.

Then we set out for the prison through the labyrinth of lanes beyond the Church of SS Peter and Paul, but we couldn't find the entrance. In the end I had to ask how a passing local how we could break in. 

Eventually we located it. 

I don't get out much - at least, not to tourist attractions - so £15 each to get in seemed quite pricey. The site isn't at all commercialised either, mainly, I guess, because this is a temporary reincarnation, plans to develop it into the ultimate gated community having recently been resubmitted to the council. What historical information there is comes in the form of bits of paper stuck to the walls. In some ways this is a little disappointing, but I think it also makes going there all the more powerful an experience.

It had taken us so long to get there that we were too late for the two-hour tour by an ex-prison officer, so we wandered around by ourselves instead. 

The visitors' area

One of the treatment rooms

The morgue

I counted the kitchen utensils out and I counted them all back in again

The thing that troubled me about the windows wasn't the bars but the obscured glass. No view of the sky or the exercise yard or even the wall opposite. Imprisonment means being imprisoned inside four walls with no pictures, no decoration and the

only escape route inwards. 

I was also troubled by the fact that the executioner's guest room (he would arrive at 4pm on the day preceding a hanging) was directly across the narrow corridor from the condemned's cell. 

The condemned prisoner would be introduced to the executioner on the appointed day at the appointed time, and a fake bookcase covering a door set into the end wall of the cell would be swung aside and the prisoner marched directly into the place of execution.  

Albert Pierrepoint estimated that he would be dead between eight and twenty seconds after their hand shake. 

These rooms and those below were converted into offices, which is why there's now a ceiling beneath where the trap door was.

No view here either.

The exercise yard

Although we hadn't seen anywhere near all of it, the place was weighing heavily on my heart by now, and Jan looked a bit stir-crazy too. I didn't think I could stay there much longer. 

But when it came to it, we couldn't find out way out. It was the exact reverse of the situation we'd found ourselves in earlier.

We made it outside at last, but I couldn't help wondering how on earth anyone would want to buy an appartment in a place with such a palpably oppressive atmosphere. My heart felt as if it was in the grip of a fist. 

As we made our way back to the town centre I heard a familiar and longed-for screaming and my first swift of 2019 soared overhead. A cheering sight.

And then it was back to Glasonbury for poetry and a party and beautiful birdsong. I'll be back at HMP Shepton Mallet with poems about freedom in October.