Glasfryn Project

Mike was a quiet man who kept himself to himself. He was always asking for fresh clay for his pottery work, and could get on the teacher’s nerves. And then there was the Friday evening carrying of cardboard boxes, marked fragile, to reception so they could be shipped off to Ireland. Inside the boxes were brightly-coloured, highly-glazed, houses, 3-inch figures of men, women and children, and other objects, crafted meticulously day after day in the prison pottery class.

Mike didn’t say much, but if persuaded he would launch into stories of dogs and cats, of poaching and performing wonders. He would bend and swoop as he warmed to his tale, and his traveller accent was loaded with emphases and intimacies, shifting in pace and volume. I asked him if he could write some down and he did.

I reared him

myself like a mother feeds her

baby she puts the food in her

mouth and chews it then rolls

the food between her THUMB and

forefinger and place it in baby’s

mouth well that how I REARED

him the reason I do this is

wherever I go if I get lost

or he would get LOST I spit on the

ground he SMELLS my D – N – A

and he will find me I used

to play hide and SEEK with

him

because I used to urinate on a tree and he

would think to himself MY MASTER

then I’d spit

here ate every dive every river

I’d cross I’d spit on the

Ground and he would know I

crossed that river so that’s why

he would never be a LOST

dog because if I lost him I’d

spit and urinate all the way

home and he would SMELL that

scent all the way home

He wanted to write about how he could use his skills to find the missing victim of Ian Brady. He was convinced they’d never found the body because it was buried under a stream-bed. Mike proclaimed he could alter the course of rivers.

I CAN STAY DOWN 10 FEET OF

WATER ALL DAY ALL night.

I CAN GO TO A DEPTH where my

EARS CAN STAND SO MUCH PRESSURE

I CAN STAY under WATER for A

WEEK HYPNOTIZE fish I get BIG

Fright IN AN OLD CANAL I WAS

DOWN under WATER ABOUT 20

Minutes NO OXYGEN I go under

CAVERN big pikes I GRAB ONE

ME and him fight in water for

ABOUT TWO minutes I come up

Like DOLPHIN IN A PLACE CALLED

Gloucester 26lb 7ounce pike IN

MY BARE HANDS people CLAP

HANDS everybody TAKE photos

I GO DOWN again I five OR

Six pike really big about 40lb

They LOOK at me I look at

Them I TRY TO tickle HIM

HE LASH out they ALL TURN POOL

Very DARK I get fright because

40 AND 50lb pike flying about IN

POOL no eat you but hit of FACE

Hit of BODY very dangerous I CURL

Up into BALL LIKE HEDGEHOG I

Still hunt fresh water CONGERS

Very very RARE DELICACY YOU SEE

In NO BOOKS I fight with them

In water I go TELL MAN WHO

Write BOOKS HELP ME write BOOK

I fight with SEA CONGER

AND ALSO WOLF EEL HE HISS

SNARL like DOG very DANGEROUS

I ALSO SWIM with BASKING shark

I RUB his belly. He like quiet

LAMB. I ALSO fight with DOG fish.

He got skin like open RAZOR

So I grab him BY the GILLS

NO FISHERMAN in the WORLD

Catch MANY fish AS ME I

CAN catch thousand A DAY big

Mountain trout. ME CAN catch

With my HANDS 3 seconds I

MASTER with ROD FLY WORM

Spinner ME MASTER. I ALSO

Hypnotize fish hundreds in seconds.

I hypnotize RABBITS ALL ANIMALS

ME CATCH very big trout 18lb

With my hands very fast WATER

ME try LOADS times to catch him

Not to EAT just to show that

TROUT he was very PROUD TROUT

He would LOOK at ME AS to say –

I too clever for you I let him

Play one day I told TO MYSELF

He is the King of that RIVER

But I AM the king of ALL RIVERS

There’s no river I have not TAMED

I catch him when he WAS AT

FULL STRENGTH. A very COLD MORNING

And I TOOK him FROM the water

And looked him straight in the EYE

WHO’S BOSS NOW and slipped back very

Very gently into the GOLD RIVER

A SHORT STORY if A FISH COULD “HEAR” AS

GOOD AS HE COULD SEE A FISHERMAN

THEY WOULD NEVER BE

ACCEPT ME

I was mesmerized, feeling like I was listening to a tale of mythic heroism, Celtic shamanism here in the flesh from the oldest days, when the master of words could shuffle through time and space and fish were more than fish.

Poaching tales writ cosmically.

His masterpiece was a ceramic house, shaped like a mushroom, with figures for every window. “These are all my family, sir. And this one is my dead son. Some of them are still alive, and some are dead. He told us that he was shipping his art back to his wife in Ireland, where she was selling them, to make a few bob. “Who’s buying them Michael?” “Oh, they put them on the graves, sir, and other things. All kinds of people are buying them.

He lived for his art.

DEAR SIR OR LADY

Yous are probably wondering why I write this note. I have never been to school until I came to prison. I’ve never done pottery before. Without pottery I am a lost man. And whew, I feel like I sometimes feel, I don’t voice my anger out on anybody. I get lost in pottery, everything I make is for the DEAD. The house for my two dead sons, Michael and John. My wife left me in 2002 for another man and took my other two children Kathleen and Jimmy. The whereabouts all I know is Ireland. The last I heard was my daughter went through a major operation. I phoned the hospital from Swansea prison in 2004. No forward address. My people are dying like mayflies. I only get paid £6.50 a week, it costs me £2.50 a minute to phone Ireland. I have been in a few hospitals. A lot of people ask me would I have my wife back. Not if you gave me the key to England on a gold plate. It is not what was done it’s the way that it was done. It was like a horror film. Any day now I await the priest. He neither shows head nor tail but whew, the bad news comes it COMES FAST. My wife serpent God forgive me. I forgive but can’t forget. Won’t make it to Xmas and whew all the rogues come to shake my hand and say sorry for your troubles. I will tell them my troubles are now buried where yous stand. So you probably wonder why I don’t talk much. I don’t trust anybody, how could I? So you see why I like pottery, it’s all I’ve got left here and outside. Pottery is my drug. If it wasn’t for the pottery I don’t think I’d be writing the note. Me I’m like the cat, nine lives. I don’t know how I made it. Thus far so good. Pottery is all I look forward to. End. Thank you. Michael C.

And then he left.

Graham Hartill 2011

(quotations used with permission)

Poet, workshop facilitator, lecturer. Born in 1952 in the English Midlands, Graham has lived in Wales most of his life since 1971. He studied at the Universities of Wales and Massachusetts, and has since given countless workshops and classes in the UK, USA and China. Co–founder of LAPIDUS, the UK–wide association for the promotion of creative writing in therapeutic context, Graham was also a Scottish Arts Council Writing Fellow 1990-92 and an Arts Council of Wales Writer’s Bursary recipient 1993, 1999 and 2006. Selected Publications: Ruan Ji’s Island and (Tu Fu) in the Cities (The Wellsweep Press, 1992); The Lives of the Saints (RWC Press); Cennau’s Bell (The Collective Press, 2005); A Winged Head (Parthian, 2007)

View all: Issue 1, Junction Box | Posted on 25 Jun 2011 |