A feast of poetry at HMP Wandsworth
With help from a brilliant PRG volunteer, Wandsworth library hosted a wonderful poetry event recently. Senior Library Assistant Hannah Pickering tells us more.
Every now and then the library team organise an event that reminds us exactly why we do what we do, and last week’s poetry event has become one of those highlights.
We shared a lovely morning with anthologist Allie Esiri whose poetry collections have become firm favourites in schools, libraries and living rooms. Reciting these poems was actor Robert Hands, who brought the poems to life with a mix of humour and warmth.
The prisoners were engaged throughout, listening intently to all the poems and afterwards asking questions. They wanted to know the craft that goes into creating an anthology and poems too. They asked about everything from how a poem earns its emotional style, to how you’re supposed to read poetry when it feels unfamiliar, to the very practical question of how much poetry “makes” in the real world. It was an honest session and a performance that brought together ideas on how poetry shapes us and how poems should not be something avoided just because they are not always explicit in meaning.
Allie spoke beautifully about the process of putting together the collection A Poem for Every Night of the Year. Some of the poems she loves, including ‘This Be the Verse’ by Philip Larkin and ‘Celia Celia’ by Adrian Mitchell, she admitted were not family-friendly and were simply too rude to include in the compendium. But Robert read them out and they were a delightful surprise. We were grateful for the extra laughs!
There were some great moments of complete quietude with everyone listening to Robert recite these poems with such ease and rhythm proving that poetry is best appreciated when it is performed and read aloud.
By the end, several of the men said they wanted to read more poetry, and a few even said they might try writing some themselves. And it’s exactly why we keep bringing poetry and literature into spaces where they’re needed most.