SELF EXPRESSION AND SELF AWARENESS

Michael Crowley

Writer in Residence HM YOI Lancaster Farms

Author ‘Behind the Lines: creative writing with offenders and people at risk’.

What can be achieved through creative writing?

• Reflection upon, learning about, past experiences.

• Participants become more articulate; more empowered.

• Greater self awareness; improved assessment.

• Participants are encouraged to read. • Improves relationships; undermines bullying.• Writing feeds into other work

Writing Exercises for Memoir Work

Witness StatementAsk the participant to choose an experience from the past that they fell has had a significantly negative influence upon them.

 

Ask them to write about the experience in the first person present tense, as if they had returned to the scene.

 

With each draft get them to concentrate on a shorter period of time, to write in a more detailed way, employing the senses.

Writing Exercises for Memoir Work Automatic Writing

Ask the participant to: Draw a margin down the page. You are going to say a series of ten nouns and they must write a response across the page.

They have fifteen seconds to write each response.

You may stipulate that they include a colour or another kind of adjective in each response.

 

Which nouns? 

General investigatory: house, family, love, school, friendship, police, hope, journey, religion, faith etc.

Specific to the environment and the writing session: walls, keys, officers, meals, visits, letters, photos, association, nights, days…

Sight/Image

I remember sitting across from the priest and he was looking sombre

 

Sounds

His voice was quiet but serious, clear and concerning

 

Taste

Eating slimy whelks at my Grannie’s caravan at Coney Island.

 

Touch

We would go out for walks and my father would carry me on his shoulders, with my hands around his forehead when I got too tired to walk.

 

Smell

I remember walking in the front room and smell of smoke and beer would be in the air like a cloud surrounding him.

Writing Exercises for Memoir Work

Emotion into Memoir

List seven different emotions. Without thinking too much, select one.

Think of an occasion when that feeling was dominant.

Explore the event/time by responding to the five senses and the word ‘question’.

Who else was there? Who wasn’t present?

Emotion into Memoir

Complete the following lines (or a variance of):

I remember the colour of…

I remember the smell of…

I don’t remember the sound of…

I remember the taste of… etc

You will remember…

They will remember…

Writing Exercises for Self Awareness

Angel Heart

You’re a private detective sent on a case to put someone under surveillance: yourself. Up to now you’ve only been handed a photo of the target. You are in a car with a telephoto lens observing yourself across the street.

What do you see?

Describe the target physically: what they are wearing – their walk – their stance. What can you assume, just from what you see?

Today My Hand (From Noel Greig)

 

Draw around a hand. In each finger write a sentence concerning an action; ordinary or otherwise, beginning today my hand...

 

Connect a feeling and a thought to each action. It may be an unrelated thought.

Repeat the exercise using once my hand, one day my hand will, another’s hand once…

Vary the forms as much as possible

• Allegory of their own lives • Dramatise scenes from past and future• Letters to myself • Dialogue to the self • Internal monologues • Writing about self in the third person

Regular Illustrated Publications

What works best in motivating and engaging offenders to take part in creative writing?

• Variety of exercises and approaches • Versatility of form• Readings and publication of work• Editing of work• Prisoners reading and writing in their own time