‘“The State of the Prisons’: A Historic Perspective”
Britta Olinder, Gothenburg University
In 2005 Sinéad Morrissey published The State of the Prisons, a collection taking its title from the last poem in it. In six sections, each consisting of six stanzas of six lines the reader is here confronted with John Howard, prison reformer judging himself ruthlessly. Although not explicitly, the issue is justice in legal terms, reflected in social justice, moral justice and spiritual justice. The subtitle of the poem is “A History of John Howard, Prison Reformer, 1726-1790”, a history told in poetic form and poetic spirit. The difference between history and poetry becomes evident as the historical facts in this case are loaded with poetic subtlety. Words and concepts take on double or manifold meanings as biographical data are placed in a spiritual perspective.
The poem is written in the first person, in John Howard’s own voice. Ill by the plague in a Russian field hospital in the Crimea he is facing death, looking back on his adventurous life and great mission but blaming himself for his fatal mistake in betraying his own son.
“Poetry, Prisons and Voices from Beyond the Grave: Some Thoughts on Sinéad Morrisey’s The State of the Prisons (2005) and Current Memoirs of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland”
Ruben Moi, UiT The Arctic University Norway
In the questions of justice and literature in Northern Ireland, Sinéad Morrisey’s profound and painful concept volume The State of the Prisons (2005), places itself in a long tradition of prison journals on the island, raises questions of justice beyond its own time and place, and overlaps with recent publications from the Boston project, such as Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing (2018) and Ed Maloney’s Voices from the Grave (2010). This paper takes its point of departure in some of the controversial issues of Keefe’s memoir and Maloney’s biography before attending to some of the parallel questions in Morrisey’s poetry.