‘Visiting Time: Poems, essays and stories from behind the walls of HMP Shotts’, Stewart Ennis (editor)
What’s it about:
I’m stealing this from Goodreads because it is a glorious description: ‘From the inmates of Shotts prison, an accretion of voices not unlike the sounds erupting from the fiddles, flutes and guitars of musicians you might find playing in a Glasgow bar, only these disparate voices are not musical. Instead, a finely-tuned array of words expressing thoughts and emotions procured from their writers' time in prison’.
What Lynn learned:
There’s loads of queues in prison and it sounds incredibly frustrating (a poem sums this experience up more eloquently).
Illiteracy is a challenge for prisoners and even with the offer of education classes it can be challenging to engage in.
Expression from inmates is an illuminating way to really feel the reality of prison and the various ways it affects our complex human lives.
I love reading Glasgow-words and expressions – it makes me feel connected to a community and more passionate about getting justice for people.
The humour from prisoners that seeps through the writing really sticks with you.
Fave quotes:
‘The judge sez ‘yer bad’/ ah sez ‘ahm no’/ The judge sez ‘yer bad’/ ah sez ‘ahm no!’/ The judge sez ‘yer bad’/ ah sez ‘ahm no!’/ the judge f***** won’ (p.53)
‘There was a wee man frae Crewe/On tip toe he stood two ft two / Don’t make fun o’ his size / This wouldne’ be wise, / This wee man knows ju-jitsu.’ (p.70)
The Cathkin Braes – ‘this is where me and ma pals wid come / when ah was a wean / fields fu’ a’ colour / trees all staunin in line / green fields n bracken / wee streams running this wey n that / paths twisting and turnin. / walkin aimless for oors oan end / listenin tae aw the birdsongs / an me / jist breathin it aw in’ (p. 104)
Why relevant right now:
These insights will definitely encourage us to reflect on how our justice system is operating and calls for us to consider the impact of prison on a human’s life.
Interest factor: 3/5
Coffee table cred: 3/5
Ignorance of external world while reading: 4/5
Book cover design: 2/5
Help the existential crisis: 2/5
