Message in a Bottle: Prisoners show creative side through exhibition

A NEW exhibition explores how inmates may feel when seeking to contact the outside world.

A result of a series of creative writing workshops in Limerick Women’s Prison, the exhibition is an association with University of Limerick's Creative Writing MA.

Titled Message in a Bottle, the exhibition relates to how inmates may feel when seeking to contact the outside world, and the struggle of receiving reply in turn. A mix of collaborative poetry and individual work, these pieces reflect the daily contemplations of someone in prison.

It explores the inmates’ everyday thoughts, dreams, ambitions, love, grief, and, notably undercurrent, a strong desire to change.

The exhibition's five glass bottles contain statistics that are designed to make us think about the contributing factors of incarceration. Creativity and education can help rehabilitate by offering space to process these factors.

Professor Eoin Devereux funded the exhibition and Anita Dooley and Limerick Prison's staff facilitated the workshops.
“For some, the catharsis of private writing served the exact purpose we hoped: a release, a joyful outlet, an escape, and reflection. Therefore, this only some of the work produced. We hope 'Message in a Bottle' will promote integration of official creative writing programmes in often overlooked places like Limerick Prison,” said the organisers.

Given the understandable protection of identifying information, the writers remain anonymous.

“It is our hope that, one day, the girls who contributed will be able to proudly claim their work,” they added.

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This public exhibition offers the workshops' keen writers a motivational reason to keep writing: by the time they leave prison, they will have already been published.

Message in a Bottle is on display at The People's Museum, Limerick.