Graham Hartill

The men I have been working with on a one-to-one basis suffer from a variety of psychological problems, some having suffered abusive and dysfunctional backgrounds or experienced trauma in early life. They have varying degrees of literary ability, have produced poetry, life-story and fiction and have discussed it frankly with me in the context of their troubled lives. My presentation at the Training Day looked at the social and personal meanings of self-harming behaviour, outlined the project and focused on some examples of writing that have opened up exciting ideas about the very act of writing and how we evaluate its usefulness, with reference to the increasing interest in applied poetics, narrative enquiry and trauma studies.

To read the final report download it here Report in PDF format.

I am employed as writer-in-residence part-time at HMP & YOI Parc, working with adult and young offenders, young people (aged 16-18) and vulnerable prisoners. I work with the Department of Arts and Media at Parc which was recently awarded a Grade 1 for our work by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and ESTYN, the Welsh educational inspectorate.

As a writer used to working in health care and therapeutic situations, I have identified a need for a pilot project specifically aimed at one of the most serious and under-acknowledged afflictions affecting prisoners in the UK. The work, undertaken in partnership with the Safer Custody and Violence Reduction Manager at Parc, will be done on a one-to-one basis with 6-10 prisoners recruited from the adult and young offender wings.

Some facts:

• A total of 23, 420 of self-harm incidents were recorded by the prison service during 2006;
• 72% of male and 70% of male prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders;

Graham Hartill has lived mostly in Wales for the last thirty years. Poet and workshop facilitator, he is a co-founder of Lapidus, has worked in the fields of mental health and disability and was Lifelines facilitator for the Ledbury Poetry Festival for nine years, working with elderly people. He is currently writer-in-residence at HMP & YOI Parc, Bridgend.

Graham has published papers, given many talks and run countless workshops in varied areas of writing in health care and personal development, and has been awarded an Arts Council of Wales Writing Bursary to complete a book on the challenges to established forms of writing presented by this work. His poetry has been widely published in the UK and the USA as well as in China, and his selected poems, Cennau's Bell, was published in 2005 by The Collective Press. 2007 saw the launch of his latest collection, A Winged Head, by Parthian Books.