Exhibit at 'Inside'

 

EXHIBIT AT 'INSIDE'

Exhibit at 'Inside: artists and writers

in Reading Prison': old release-day shots

of men and women with their hands spread tight as

identifiers, not expressing lots.

The place with the glass roof he thought for taking

photographs, Margate-fashion, later, said

Oscar Wilde, grew hideous on breaking

the news it was the execution shed.

He recognised his poem over-used

'fearful', 'dreadful' for water-closet drab.

His boys were boys. We know, but don't refuse

his door its honoured place on cell-size slab.

We saw his cell, too many there at once,

and some took photos on their mobile phones.

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This was my entry in Cannon Poets' 'Sonnet or not' competition in October 2016.  I think it's pretty self-explanatory.  The online promotion of the exhibition referred to has long disappeared from the web, but its text began:

"HM Prison Reading opens for the first time to the public as artists, writers and performers respond to its most notorious inmate, Oscar Wilde."

I went round it with my wife Clare and a kinswoman.  The poem was triggered by an observation among us, on how many of the visitors had been taking photographs there.  For whatever reasons, none of our small family party felt any wish to do that.

The best part of the exhibition, for us, doesn't get into the poem at all.  It was a 5' conversation with one of the information people, who'd worked for the prison as a locksmith.

Following a well-established pattern, the poem was unplaced in the competition for which it was written, but has now found publication in another outlet. It's appeared in the Fringe999 poetry forum.