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.