Prison Poetry Workshop: Recent Episodes
Working Narratives
Sending radio waves through prison walls we reach an audience with content that may change their life. The Prison Poetry Workshop is the only national radio series linking prisoners to the outside world through the power of poetry. As we listen to these poems we realize they hold a deep significance to our understanding of American culture and its tradition of democratic arts.
The Prison Creative Art Project (PCAP) brings together artist from inside and outside the prison walls of Michigan to create a vibrant arts community. Navigating this process is the team of PCAP facilitators, who have an interesting history.
Alan Lomax traveled the south visiting prisons and recording songs and interviews. Lomax was a great collector of folk music of the 20th century and invested his work on recording music that was disappearing from the American cultural landscape.
We asked poet Buzz Alexander of University of Michigan's Prison Creative Art Project to record a poetry workshop for us.
Prison Poetry Workshop has asked poets from across the country to record a special workshop for our listeners. Feel free to play this series for incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated youth and adults and ask them to write their own poetry in response and send them to us. Responses may be posted on the Prison Poetry Workshop website and shared with our listening audience.
Send your response to:
Prison Poetry Workshop
P.O. Box 448
Wilmington, NC 28402
Lead Belly was born Huddie William Ledbetter near Mooringsport, Louisiana around 1889. We explore Lead Belly's life in and out of prison. Take a listen.
We asked poet Norbert Krapf to record a workshop for us. Check it out and then put pen to paper!
Prison Poetry Workshop has asked poets from across the country to record a special workshop for our listeners. Feel free to play this series for incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated youth and adults and ask them to write their own poetry in response and send them to us. Responses may be posted on the Prison Poetry Workshop website and shared with our listening audience.
Etheridge Knight (April 19, 1931 – March 10, 1991) was an African-American poet who made his name in 1968 with his debut volume, Poems from Prison.
Patrick Mathieu is a New York city based artist who majored in dance at City College of New York and had a successful career as a performer. Then, one day, there was a knock on his door.
Patrick shared his story of incarceration with the Prison Poetry Workshop and his journey both in and out of prison. Today, Patrick leads creative writing workshops on Rikers Island and at the Fortune Society.
Victoria Sammartino is the Founder and executive director of Voices UnBroken a Bronx-based non-profit organization that facilitates creative writing workshops with young people who are incarcerated/detained or in the foster care system. We asked Victoria to do a writing workshop for us. Check it out.
Prison Poetry Workshop has asked poets from across the country to record a special workshop for our listeners. Feel free to play this series for incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated youth and adults and ask them to write their own poetry in response and send them to us. Responses may be posted on the Prison Poetry Workshop website and shared with our listening audience.
Shaun Moore-Bey is a poet, activist, and regular on the Detroit spoken-word circuit. He is working to be a cultural force for his community.
We sat with Reginald Dwayne Betts and listened as he shared his own story of incarceration and his ongoing process of becoming a writer and poet.
Poet Cara Benson leads a powerful writing workshop at the Mt. McGregor Correctional Facility in Saratoga County, New York. We listen in as a group of poets dig deep and create powerful work.
Poet, publisher, editor, and founder of Broadside Press. Dudley Randall was born 14 January 1914 in Washington, D.C., but moved to Detroit in 1920 where he founded the legendary Broadside Press. Broadside helped define the Black Arts movement and published Etheridge Knight’s Poems from Prison in 1968, bring prison poetry to a national audience.
We met dozens of poets behind bars in our nation's prisons and we sat with formerly incarcerated people like Native New Orleanian, Patrick Young, who picked up pen and put it to paper finding their creative muse. Today, Young is an organizer and community educator, but his story is complicated. Join us in listening to it.
We traveled to San Quentin State Prison, California’s oldest prison, to learn about the lasting tradition of arts and spoken word in this well know institution.
We asked poet & writer Dwayne Betts to record a workshop for us. Take a listen. Prison Poetry Workshop has asked poets from across the country to record a special workshop for our listeners. Feel free to play this series for incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated youth and adults and ask them to write their own poetry in response and send them to us. Responses may be posted on the Prison Poetry Workshop website and shared with our listening audience. This is amazing drop-in content for programs that have prison audiences
Judith Tannenbaum taught poetry in prisons across the United States and intensively at San Quentin and other California prisons through Arts-in-Corrections. While working at San Quentin she began a collaboration with Elmo Chatmann and Spoon Jackson that resulted in two books. Come learn about this unique exchange.
Our time with Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop was powerful! D.C. youth who are shipped into the Federal prison system had little contact with home or educational opportunities until Free Minds arrived. We hear their stories and poetry. Check it out.
We interviewed Randall Horton about his experience with incarceration and the process he underwent in becoming a poet.
Randall Horton is the author of The Definition of Place and the Lingua Franca of Ninth Street, both from Main Street Rag. Randall is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award and most recently a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature. His creative and critical work has most recently appeared in Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review and The Packingtown Review. Randall is a Cave Canem Fellow, a member of the Affrilachian Poets and a member of The Symphony: The House that Etheridge Built. He has a MFA in Poetry from Chicago State University and a PhD in Creative Writing from SUNY Albany. Randall is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Haven.
We asked poet Kyes Steven of Auburn University's Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project to record a workshop for us. Take a listen.
Prison Poetry Workshop has asked poets from across the country to record a special workshop for our listeners. Feel free to play this series for incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated youth and adults and ask them to write their own poetry in response and send them to us. Responses may be posted on the Prison Poetry Workshop website and shared with our listening audience. This is amazing drop-in content for programs that have prison audiences.
Join the Prison Poetry Workshop as we travel to New Orleans and join a group of prison poets who are taking on Walt Whitman.
Sit in any prison classroom or recreation room and ask: How many writers are in the room? How many people are writing rhymes or poems? Carefully-folded pieces of paper come out of pockets – words written in tightly stylized hand-writing. As we listen to these poems we realize they hold a deep significance to our understanding of American culture and its tradition of democratic arts.
The Prison Poetry Workshop traveled to Alabama and met the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project, a part of Auburn University, which serves prisons across the state. APAEP believes it's important for the adult prison population to gain an education and access to the arts. Join us as we listen in on their writing workshop.
Writer and Latino activist Luis J. Rodriguez was born in El Paso and grew up in East L.A. We went to talk Luis Rodriguez simply because he, and his writing, was referenced by so many of the incarcerated writers we met and interviewed along the way to making Prison Poetry Workshop. The youth in D.C. central had thumbed copies of his best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and his name came up at facilities across the country.
You can learn more about Rodriguez writing at his website and you should certainly visit the Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar, CA.