Visiting Time by Stewart Ennis

Visiting Time by Stewart Ennis

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Summary

Collection of stories, poems, essays and other writing by the prisoners at HMP Shotts in Scotland.

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Visiting Time by Stewart Ennis

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: Porridge, a breakfast people make in pots./ But I'm doing porridge here in SHOTTS. In one of the prose pieces, a grandfather pretends to his visiting grandson that he's a secret agent on his final mission signalling to the reader his retirement from crime; in another, there is the ongoing concern for an elderly father at home with senile dementia: ... he's ducking behind the curtain ... I don't know if I can cope with this today. Haiku and longer poetic forms capture the interminable frustration of being inside and the effect this has on the human psyche: Go off the rails/End up in the cells/Apply for bail/Application fail// Back to jail/howl and wail. One reflection on the emotional difficulty of being transgender in a system that does little to offer support adds poignancy to an anthology that is already thrumming with humour and attitude.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781913212001
ISBN 10 1913212009
Title Visiting Time
Author Stewart Ennis
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Vagabond Voices
Year published 2019-11-04
Number of pages 170
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.