Your Questionnaire

There's no space in your Questionnaire
to tell you how it felt rowing on the fjords

Where in your risk assessment
can I explain how it was to make love in
Florence

When will you ask me
about the Mayor of Stockholm's speech in
the Nobel Hall

Where do I tick the box
To say what it's like to run in the Troodos
Mountains

Will this psychometric test show you
the guts it took to climb Ayers Rock at age
five

Is this the interview
where I describe playing Frisbee for Ireland
at the world Championships

Is that the report
which records the first time I saw a play at
the National

Could that be the parole dossier
that outlines the weekends spent youth
hostelling with my dad

Just let me know
when you want to hear about me.

Poem by Malcom, HMP Wandsworth,
printed in the Anne Frank Prison Project Issue 1, reprinted with permission. www.annefrank.org.uk


My new flatmate Charlie is involved in working with offenders and ex-offenders in using the arts to promote transformation, forgiveness and learning. He produces a magazine called 'The A Word' and this week came second in national awards for prisoners projects. Through giving these people a voice he is actively encouraging people to change how they see themselves, and therefore open up a possibility for change and growth, and often for reconcillation with victims of crime, too. www.apcentre.org.uk/arts_on_the_out . He brought a magazine home last week with the above poem in, and I wanted to put it here. The magazines he brings back are full of incredible work, art, poetry, prose, all of it coming from a life 'inside'.