Hay Festival Heads Behind Bars to Unlock Inmates’ Minds
By Robin Turner
PARTS of the world-renowned Hay literary festival will be held in one of Wales’ biggest jails this year.
A Hay “satellite festival” will run for 10 days from May 22 at Bridgend’s Parc Prison.
Ex-US President Jimmy Carter leads the line-up of guests for this year’s Hay Festival, which also includes comedian Ken Dodd and Hollywood actress Kathleen Turner.
Other guests include chef Jamie Oliver, M & S boss Stuart Rose and former head of the Army, General Sir Mike Jackson.
Live videos from some of the Hay events will be beamed to Parc Prison and writers including Owen Sheers and Rachel Billington will go to the 1,000-capacity jail at Brackla Common to chat about literature with inmates.
The Hay Festival management has also donated more than 1,000 books to HMP Parc’s library.
Bridgend MP Madeleine Moon is fully behind the prison link-up.
She said yesterday: “This will be a unique opportunity to promote reading and writing among prisoners and to give them the chance to enjoy new literature.
“Finding opportunities to improve education and creativity in new ways is essential.
“Literary festivals have a reputation for being exclusive to the chattering classes.
“The Hayin Parc festival shows that enjoying reading and talking about books is open to everyone.
Held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, the town and the festival have grown in size and stature since an invitation was extended to “a few like- minded friends” to gather for a weekend of literary relaxation in 1988.
Since then it has attracted some of the world’s leading writers, politicians and musicians.
In 2001, ex-US President Bill Clinton famously called it “the Woodstock of the mind”.
Yesterday, Hay Festival director Peter Florence explained the thinking behind the Hay in Parc satellite festival.
He said: “The prison authorities came to us and it is clear a lot of good work is being done in literacy and literature with inmates.
“People have to remember that books are probably a much bigger part of an inmate’s life than they are of other people’s lives.
“So many writers like Cervantes, who dreamed up Don Quixote behind bars for instance, used their time in prison productively.”
During the Hay Festival itself, Peter Florence will hold a public discussion with former Welsh prison inmate Casper Walsh about Mr Walsh’s autobiography Criminal.
Mr Florence said, “Many people who start to write in prisons find they have a talent for it.”
Famous books inspired by jail
A PRISON DIARY, by former politician and best-selling author Jeffrey Archer, was written during his four-year sentence for perjury in 2001.
PAPILLON by Henri Charriere, which became a big-selling film.
The book accounts for 14 years of Charriere’s life from when he was convicted of murder in France and sentenced to a life of hard labour at the Devil’s Island penal colony.
DON QUIXOTE, by Miguel De Cervantes, a former tax collector, was conceived while the author was in the Crown Jail of Seville in 1597 after “discrepancies” were uncovered in his accounts. The story of a country gent with fantasies of being a knight errant became world famous.
THE STORY OF KING ARTHUR by Sir Thomas Mallory, was said to have been dreamed up during Mallory’s many prison stretches. His long list of criminal charges in the 1450s, included burglary, rape, sheep stealing, and attempting to ambush the Duke of Buckingham. He escaped twice, once by fighting his way out and once by swimming a moat.
THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL, by Oscar Wilde, was written after his release from Reading prison on May 19, 1897.
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