PART 2 OF THIS INTERVIEW IS HERE
What happens when you get out of prison?
When I got out I started writing a memoir. I sort of had to relive my childhood to write it. Sometimes I would meet up with Pamela Brown at the Prison Arts Foundation, and other times she would ZOOM me. I would be in bits bawling my lamps out because I would remember getting the kickings, I would remember pain, and I could even remember the meals I was eating. All sorts of memories came back to me. It took me about a year and a half to do.
Did you get help editing and working through your material?
Pamela Brown is a legend. She has this way about her. It makes me think that if I had have had a school teacher way back that had the same mental touch that she has, I think I would have been a genius by now.
She has a way of pulling things out of you. Things that I didn’t even know were in there. It was an amazing experience for me.
When I was in jail and attending the classes, I was walking round feeling like I owned the place. When the cell door slammed my mind just came to life. I didn’t see the walls closing in, or the bars or anything else. I just felt free.
And now you have a poetry book and a memoir?
I am halfway through another book, “The Great Snowball Wars” which is loosely based on my life, it’s part truth, part fiction.
I am also involved in writing a play working with the Prison Arts Foundation. I feel like I am on cloud nine at the moment so, as far as the future is concerned, just writing and more writing. I feel free to do whatever I want to do.
Any last words?
One thing which is quite important about my book, is that it raises the question of the role of women during The Troubles. I noticed that women seemed to come to the forefront in the mid 70’s. They had two to three jobs to make ends meet and were in control of the purse strings, probably for the first time. And yes, this was on both sides of the community. Families lived hand to mouth, and not only that, women patrolled the streets, barking orders to the kids, “get you on home now or I’ll be having a word with yer ma! – it’s going to kick off here soon ”
They organised rallies and sit downs, brought Saracens to a standstill and demonstrations took place across the North of Ireland with women playing a crucial role in the Peace Movement. In 1976 Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, who I heard my mother talk about numerous times, protested about the ongoing violence in Northern Ireland.
So if anything the role of women is very important, along with my own story, in terms of things which come out of this book.
