Completing my recollections of running poetry workshops in Pentridge Prison in the eighties. To read the whole series, see Blog Archive in right column, May - July 2022. The posts are numbered in order, with the earliest first.
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What of the question I haven’t yet addressed. Why was John there? (What had he done?)
One could ask that of all of them, of course. I don't have those details for most, but did gather eventually that violence was often involved, and sometimes drugs.
(I do have the details about Sweet-face. Several particularly callous murders. Trust me, more than that you don't want to know. I finally looked him up in the State Library newspaper archives – in those pre-Internet days – since I was there anyway, looking up John.
They all thought they were so famous! But, as I've said, I'd never heard of any of them. I don't think any of the visiting poets had.)
I had realised that John's crime must have been serious if he was serving a long sentence. Then there was the startling statement by Pen-pal. Even though Tallest and I rejected that out of hand, it lingered a bit in the back of my mind.
Pen-pal did say musingly of John, the day he visited us,
‘He was very subdued when he came out of H Division. He did behave differently after that.’
(I didn’t even know he had been in H Division, the notorious ‘punishment block’.)
But finally the newspaper I opened on that fateful Saturday told me what he had done – one extra shock, accompanying the news of his suicide.
He was convicted, at 17, of the double murder of two teenagers, and was being held ‘at The Governor’s pleasure’. This did not mean the prison Governor. It’s more commonly known as ‘at Her Majesty’s pleasure’, the Federal and State Governors in Australia being representatives of the Queen. People under 18, who successfully plead insanity, can be imprisoned on these terms for crimes which would earn an adult a life sentence. The Executive Council, which advises the Governor, decides if and when such a prisoner is ready to be released. There's no fixed term.
Had I been naive and self-deluded? Had I fallen for the false face of one who was really a monster? It was perhaps not impossible, given that efficiency and skill were two of his most obvious qualities. Perhaps he could deceive people skilfully, too? I decided I owed it to myself and him to find out.
So, some time after his death, when I was past the first wild grief and rivers of weeping, and into the benumbed phase, I took myself to the State Library and looked up the relevant newspapers to find all the particulars of his crime. It was time I faced this. Numb was a good place to be for such a confrontation.
He had shot his girlfriend and his best mate, and claimed afterwards that he had no motive. The three had spent the afternoon together. She was only 15.
In one workshop, I remembered, another visiting poet had said something which seemed like a question about his crime. John said, sounding a bit strained as though covering embarrassment,
‘It was, er, a domestic matter’ – in a way that declared the conversation closed.
Nowadays the word ‘domestic’ would suggest a specific kind of violence; back then we were more ignorant. Even so, it was possible to conclude that perhaps he wasn’t insane. Perhaps it wasn't motiveless, but a ‘crime of passion’, of jealousy; and insanity was the plea which, coupled with his age, at least gave him some hope of getting out of prison one day.
And perhaps to even think that is to malign those dead teenagers. I can’t know, only form opinions.
It was apparent from the funeral notice that he must have been brought up Catholic, even though when I knew him he seemed to lean towards atheism. It appeared that his father was a military or ex-military man – which might explain how John had access to the guns he used to kill his friends.
I also found items about some dramatic events during the early years of his imprisonment – an escape attempt, and an angry protest against prison conditions – and that he had later aligned himself with the ‘muscle’ in the prison, specifically a white-skinned, right-wing gang competing for power with some other ethnic groups.
In one letter to me, he had said, in a mood of self-analysis about the difficulty of opening up to love,
‘So easy to become ego-centric in here. But no, a little too far right.’
I now understood that last sentence rather more specifically!
Then I had to reflect on and process all that I'd learned. I had to weigh it in the balance with what I had observed and experienced, try to conclude what was the truth of the person I knew.
'You have accepted me totally as the person I am today....'
I met a man who was searching, exploring new ways to be human. I’ve already mentioned his unselfishness. If that was an act, I can only say, it was damn convincing! It wasn’t something switched on and off according to convenience. He was sometimes guarded, but appeared at all times authentic.
I think it more likely he had realised that, in order to change his circumstances, he needed to truly change himself; he couldn’t just fake it and expect that to work.
And I was in possession of his poetry notebooks, which I read cover to cover for all sorts of reasons besides the possibility of publishing him. I found poems written towards the end of his life which spoke of finding some stirrings of religious faith (re-finding them, I suppose).
There are prisoners who have spectacular conversions, which are usually suspected of being an attempt to get some advantage, such as better treatment or earlier release – though of course some could be genuine. This wasn’t like that. He never shared these poems in the group, at least while I was there, and in them he confessed to some embarrassment at the prospect of being seen to have come around to this position, contemplating the possibility that God was real after all – and God's love in particular. The fact of his wrestling with it so privately makes me think it was something he was actually experiencing.
But I can’t really argue a case to convince anyone else. If you are reading this, you must make up your own mind. Or leave it in abeyance, forever unknown. I don’t blame you if you trust the newspaper reports and the undoubted facts they report on, above what so many who knew him in those final years said, in grief and shock and love, in the death notices.
I can only decide for me. His letters to me always seemed to have a searing honesty. They contained jokes, reassurances, confessions of uncertainty, even tentative declarations – but they were not seductive or manipulative, they didn’t make extravagant promises, nor any demands whatsoever.
He wanted to grow, to learn, to develop, to do some good in the world, leaving a better legacy than might have been expected – and yes, to love.