• Michael Crowley Writer in Residence HMP YOI Lancaster Farms
Michael has been writer in residence at Lancaster Farms Young Offender Institution since October 2007 involving prisoners in writing, reading and performance. He came to the post as a writer but also as a former youth justice worker having worked for Trafford Youth Offending Services for seven years. Whilst working in the day job Michael was writing plays gradually getting more work produced until he first went part time then left the YOT to take up a couple of youth theatre commissions. When they were finished an opportunity presented itself through the Writers in Prison Network.
It felt like the post was made for me. I’d used creative writing with many of my cases as a YOT officer, producing several anthologies for Trafford and putting the methods and experiences into a reference book for Young Voice Publications. Working at Lancaster Farms has since posed new challenges but developed me as an artist and as a practitioner.
Anthologies produced at the Farms are striking in appearance; they include memoir and poetry but also short fiction and drama. For work to make its way in it has to be crafted and honest. The glib “learnt my lesson” homilies don’t make it because no one believes them. Lads often begin by writing about themselves, about the crime that carried them into custody in a detailed, considered way, but the objective is always to give them new perspectives, other voices and lives to inhabit.
Whilst the lads have a story to tell they need to appreciate that theirs is not the only story. That there are other stories with characters and lives that matter just as much as theirs.
Memoir work demands that the past is quarried for key days and moments illuminated in a way that makes them of interest to a reader.
I remember a sea of black
a chill in the crowd, the only colour
the flowers the horses pulled,
their hooves clapped on the tarmac.
He commanded respect that day
I saw my culture for the first time
realised we were all lost followers.
From Leaving by Joe
Michael sometimes asks lads to write a narrative in the voice of a victim, if not an actual victim, then an imaginary victim from a similar imaginary crime. This kind of writing takes weeks of intensive work and is not always for publication. Prison anthologies are not for public consumption but often leave with prisoners so care must be taken with content and confidentiality. Autobiographical work is often passed on to NOMS and Probation workers for discussion with the lad at sentence planning meetings.
The purpose of writing about a crime with a prisoner has to be an attempt to reduce the risk of future offending.
The job of a writer in residence in a prison is always to encourage a use of the library. Anthologies include book reviews and at informal performances of written work in the library, prisoners are invited to stand and talk about a book they have read and enjoyed.
The difference between prisoners who will write for me once or twice under my guidance, and someone who will write independently long term, is that the latter is a persistent reader.
Michael believes there is equal and different value in lads reading their work to other prisoners and staff.
Performance is fundamental to a cultural strategy for the establishment as whole. It is another way of undermining a pro criminal culture. To this end I’ve sought to develop a partnership with Dukes Theatre Lancaster.
A few selected prisoners are invited to read forthcoming plays being produced at the Dukes and then write their own work inspired by the text. Actors and a director then come in rehearse and help develop the text in preparation for performance in the chapel. The process was undertaken on the back of Jamaica House in May 2009 and will begin on Mice and Men in October 2009.
The most basic reason for organising performance is the sense of coherence and respect for the performers that is required by the audience. Being an audience requires a modicum of generosity, applause and silence – not found in abundance in a YOI. The preparation to perform requires a degree of discipline and commitment that many of the lads at the Farms are not used to. They are not confident with language, their diction and enunciation is poor. One objective of performance is to begin to change this. Writing for an anthology certainly gives a lad something tangible that is positive, reading their work publicly in a dignified way to their peers may not last long but it is a public statement that here is something more to me.
Much of Michael’s work takes place one to one, although demand necessitates that he run small group sessions and is currently working with a small group on performing a scene from Henry V.
Nearly all the lads at the Farms might be described as culturally impoverished, so I take it as a given that they have an appetite to taste the unfamiliar. Part of their motivation to look at Shakespeare may well be a sense of transgression, that this isn’t meant for us, but much of it is also the pleasure involved.
Do Michael’s work and the work of other writers in residence make any difference, how does it contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders? Prisoners are routinely asked to write in what ways, if at all, they feel they benefit from writing and performance.
People benefit from creative writing because it is way to unlock hidden emotion. It is a way of being understood. It is a way to get out of this world and go to another world where anything can happen.…I’ve tried to write from a victim of crime perspective and the truth is I’ve never thought like this before. I’ve never been bothered about people I don’t know, I’ve always thought if I don’t know someone, why should I care? Writing from their perspective makes me think about their circumstances, their lives…
John, Lancaster Farms.
This kind of work may not make all the difference on its own, but it can be a valuable resource for the criminal justice system.
