Day 16 - Tuesday, March 20, 2007

It was Rhodri's turn to visit prison today, as we were running a session with Niall Griffiths at Swansea Prison.

HMP Swansea is a category B local prison, which holds adult males, remanded into custody from the courts, convicted and sentenced prisoners.

When we first started to think about doing the workshops in the prison, I asked the prison education officers about the kind of books the inmates liked to read. Ironically enough, crime or true crime thrillers were amongst the favourites! So we decided that Niall Griffiths' book, a black comedy about a man on the run from a London gangster, would be a good choice for these workshops.

Rhodri and Niall visited the prison two weeks ago to give out copies of the book, and Niall introduced himself as an author, explaining what he did from day to day and talking about the other books he'd published. He then set the group a challenge of writing their own 'Quick Read' of no more than 500 words, saying that he'd be coming back during Reading Communities Week to see what they'd come up with and choose the best one to receive a prize.

Rhodri said that the group were quite honest with Niall regarding what they thought of the book - one said he liked it, but thought the ending was rubbish! I think Niall was okay about it!

The story-writing exercise was really successful. Some of them were very moving, since a lot of the group had been through some terrible experiences. It went some way to explaining how some of these articulate and intelligent men found themselves in the prison.

I hope we can publish some of the stories on this blog, once they've been collected and typed up.