An evening of poetry at The Clink, Styal with John Lindley and Joy Winkler

Join us at The Clink Restaurant HMP Styal for a special evening of fine food and poetry on Thursday 7 November! Included in the ticket price is a delicious three-course meal cooked by our students and an arrival drink. All proceeds from the evening will go to The Clink Charity.

Joy Winkler and John Lindley first met in prison. In Styal women’s prison in Cheshire to be precise. Joy was employed as Writer in Residence and organised many creative writing projects during her eight-year tenure. Included were writers’ and readers’ groups as well as the founding of a prison magazine, a storybook mums’ scheme where the women wrote and recorded CD’s for their children and an Arts Council funded cabaret show which was performed by more than 50 prisoners to inmates and visitors as part of a three day series. 

Joy knew that poetry was catching on when she was made aware that complaints to the Governor were being sent in rhyme.

John was employed as a part-time basic skills tutorin the prison’s Education Department (a role in which he shoe-horned poetry into his sessions at every opportunity!). In addition, he ran a series of evening poetry workshops for a group of inmates and weekly creative writing sessions for Waite wing which housed prisoners in need of greater supervision.

He published an in-house pamphlet collection of the poems that came out of his workshops with his evening group entitled ‘Poetic Justice’. 

Amongst their many other independent projects, Joy and John went on to perform together as part of two touring poetry shows: Bunch of Fives and Fourpenny Circus. They have written a book called ‘Inside’ - a collection of poems that stemmed from their experiences of working in HMP Styal.