To be continued

He'd been thinking all day about that evening's writers group session. He wanted to introduce the men to the golden shovel, a poetic form where you borrow a line from somewhere and its words become the last word of each line of your own poem. A famous line, usually. Or, it turns out, a bumper sticker.

Grant is a career journalist. For years he wrote a weekly column, and when it ended in 2020 he realised how long it had been since he'd written anything just for himself. He'd written poetry in his early twenties. Then life happened, for the best part of thirty years. It came back in his mid-fifties, on a beach in North Otago, on the way to the Catlins. 

The writers group found him through a poetry friend, and the moment she mentioned it, Grant says, it felt like something that had been coming. For a while he'd felt his faith asking him to move towards people on the margins, not past them.

"I've made bad life choices too," he says, "and I'm not on the street, and I'm not in prison."

The group runs weekly at Pathway's Navigate unit, where men are preparing to return to the community. Grant is one of the newer volunteers, and he was still nervous the first night. He'd expected a bigger group. There were three men, and almost straight away he had the feeling he was somewhere worth being. 

The bumper sticker went down well. The men got stuck in. All of them wrote something, and the writing got them talking.

You don't need to be a writer to help. Before his first night he was told the group is about 70 per cent hanging out and 30 per cent writing. He reckons that's about right. The words are a way in.

Getting approved to volunteer in a prison takes a while. There are checks to pass and an induction to sit. "You could get partway through and think, this is all too hard," Grant says. "I'm glad I didn't put it in the too hard basket." You're always paired with someone experienced, and no one expects you to make every session. Grant can't always. A few sessions in, he already wishes he could.

At the same session, one of the men kept writing while the conversation drifted to rugby and back. When it was time to pack up, he still wasn't finished. "I'm going to mark this down," he said, "as to be continued."

The group meets again next week.

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