John Hegley poem

John Hegley was on Arthur Smith's Balham Bash the other night and read out a poem which I thought I would share. You can hear it here (it starts about 8 minutes in).

"This is a piece about when I was working in Reading jail and getting some of the prisoners to write some poems. We went on radio Berkshire and read out the poems but some of the listeners phoned in and they were angry that the prisoners were seeming to have too easy a time of it, so this is in response to that:

The Ending of the Offending

For prisoners playing the price,

Just a punishment may not suffice,

The best use of time,

May be learning to rhyme,

Making sure it's not too nice a process of course; you don't want people thinking that a life of crime leads to free poetry workshops."