Pubdate: 16 May 1999 Source: Sunday Independent (Ireland) Contact: The Sunday Independent (Ireland) Copyright: Independent Newspapers (Ireland) Ltd Website: http://www.independent.ie/ Author: Olaf Tyaransen THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE Marsha Hunt, former actress, model, singer and mother of Mick Jagger's first child, now runs a writing class in Mountjoy prison, OLAF TYARANSEN talked to her WHENEVER Marsha Hunt is written about in a newspaper, journalists usually manage to mention the fact that she's the mother of Mick Jagger's first child in their opening sentence (you see, I've just done it myself!). The attractive 53-year-old American has had a hugely diverse and successful career over the past thirty years but, it seems no matter what she does, she can't shake that Mick monkey off her back. In one sense it's hardly surprising. Since first shooting to fame in the hit Sixtie's musical Hair, most of her career moves have been at least semi-glamorous she has modelled, sung, acted, presented a radio talk show and written books and kept her very much in the public eye. For the last six months however, she has been teaching a creative writing class in Mountjoy Prison, a job that's perhaps as unglamorous as it gets. Still, this didn't stop a Sunday newspaper running a montage featuring a semi-nude photo of her with Jagger and the grey walls of Mountjoy in the background recently, to accompany an article about The Junk Yard, the just-published book of prisoners writing that has resulted from her classes. It's something that she's had to get used to over the years but, as she reminds me when she finally arrives into the Irish Writers Museum for this interview tired and flustered from a day of meetings and classes that began at 6am she's conscious that the whole project doesn't turn into what she calls the “Mick and Marsha Show,” stressing that the book's subject matter is a far more interesting topic. It certainly is. The Junk Yard which she has edited and introduced, features 23 pieces of powerful prose from the prisoners in her Mountjoy Workshop, previously unheard and often shocking voices from a section of Irish society that rarely gets a word in edgeways. Their stories are depressingly similar, graphically describing lives lived on a tread mill of poverty, misery, despair and addiction in a Dublin that many wouldn't recognise. Although some of the pieces are childhood memoirs and there are many humorous moments, the book's most recurring theme is heroin. According to Aslan's Christy Dignam the book “shows us the dirt under the nails of addiction”. It's hardly surprising that the book is so graphic most, if not all, of Hunt's writing students were serving time for drug-related offences. A good number of them were still using the drug while in Mountjoy (and indeed while attending her classes) and so, the resulting prose really tells it like it is, for the average twenty-something North Dublin heroin addict. If the stories shock they do so because they're honest and from the heart, holding absolutely nothing back. Although initially most of the prisoners were either suspicious of her motives or just looking to relieve their boredom, Hunt gradually built up their trust to a point where they were willing to attempt something they would probably never have attempted otherwise. Even so, she's still incredibly modest about her achievement in getting her class of convicts to open up and write about their experience. “They're all very clear,” she says of her writers. “All they needed was somebody to tell them that it's alright to say it like you say it. I didn't do any magic here. I really didn't. I came in and maybe what I had to give them was my experience as a writer that has taught me that saying it your way is the best way to say it. “You know, I can rewrite a sentence 57 times and not know if the 57th time is any better than the first. But my lack of discipline about how many choices I have can certainly get in the way. They don't have that. Boom! - it's on the page. “And what the book is about to me is the marginalised community in Dublin, and heroin is a major aspect of that. You know, these are all writers writing about events in their lives. It's about a life where heroin is on offer for them the way ice-cream on a float is for middle-class kids.” She claims to have benefited from the whole experience even more than the prisoners. “It probably had a good psychological effect on me,” she smiles. “I'd been working on a book for two years and had been very much in isolation so it was great to have the opportunity to work with people. And it was also really good to realise that I was at a point where I could genuinely share things that other people could understand and make use of.” Although most of the pieces are well written, one or two stand head and shoulders above the rest. She's confident that at least some of the contributors will go on to write more (two of her students have already applied to go to university upon release). “A few of them definitely do have careers ahead of them if they stick at it,” she maintains. “Whether they'll do what they have to do after I'm not there is going to be up to them, but I actually hope to get a couple of them book deals.” As it happens, Hunt, who has written a number of well received novels (including last year's superb Like Venus Fading) has no further plans to write any more creative prose herself. “I don't really want to write any more fiction,” she says. “Writing is a profession, not a hobby, and I feel that the nature of the publishing business is such that it doesn't work for me. I'm a slow writer and I can't afford to take two years to write a book. I can't do that unless the books are really selling and the sort of books I write are literary and they will become popular more by accident than design. So I'll continue to write. I just wrote 6,000 words for the introduction to this but I'm not gonna sit down and write another book.” However, she is currently writing a play based on her Mountjoy experience for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her partner, Wicklow-based film-maker Alan Gilsenan, will direct the show. In fact, it was Gilsenan's documentary about the prison that initially stirred her interest in working with the prisoners and enabled her to contact the prison in the first place. She found the governor, John Lonergan, to be extremely receptive to the idea. “He's doing a really great job in very difficult conditions,” she says. “Roddy Doyle once said he should be President. Personally, I think he'd make a better Taoiseach.” Another project which has come out of Hunt's involvement with the prison and her sudden exposure to the seriousness of Dublin's heroin problem is the foundation of a non-profit drug support group called 3R, which she hopes to fund initially through her contacts in the music business. “I'm starting a non-profit organisation called 3R which stands for Retreat, Research, Re-educate,” she explains. “What I think we must look for is a medical or scientific cure for addiction. And I don't understand why the fight has been given up for that. I mean, look at what happened when Aids appeared. All of a sudden there was a force of medical support behind that. I mean, whatever anybody says about the gay community, the gay community was not marginalised because it was poor. And when those boys started dying, their families wanted to know they were going to stop this from happening. “But I think what we have here is a disease in the poor community and that middle-class people aren't interested. They would rather buy security systems for their cars and their houses to keep people out who need IEP30 a day for heroin. My argument is that we should stop spending money on the security systems and actually look to these people who have been abused and therefore are reliant upon hope.” The Junk Yard - Voices From An Irish Prison is published by Mainstream Publishing. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea