Doing Time (20 page)

The combined efforts of the nation's colleges and universities, professional associations and political action committees, individual voters, as well as the erudite pleas of the prisoners themselves, effected the defeat of the Helms Amendment in two separate joint committees. The process was repeated against the Coleman-Gordon Amendment.

In this effort incarcerated persons learned that they were not powerless. They could lobby Washington politicians just like any other special interest group. What the men and women who wear numbers on their chests lack in political clout and financial resources, they can make up in cunning and determination to succeed. Across the nation, the motto of prisoners needs to become
nee aspera tenant
(frightened by no difficulties).

1993, Indiana State Reformatory Pendleton, Indiana

Six women argue with their lives
as they write among their dreams
chasing shadows down streets
and reaching for words

like fruit, like stars, words
to save their lives
to snatch them from the streets
defend their dreams

Don't we deserve our dreams
our hard borne words
labor of our lives?
We have taken in our streets

the clash, the color, the broken streets
and shaped them into dreams
and then to words
to change our lives

six lives held by dreams
a world of streets, our luminous words

1996, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility Bedford Hills, New York

“Write about something inside that wants to get out — a poem, a bitch, a muse, something
tethered.”

It's six fifteen on a Wednesday evening. Six women, pens in hand, are gathered around a table. The lesson has come from Hettie Jones, who runs the writing workshop at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. This “inside-out” exercise is only one of the many assignments she has brought us over the nine years the workshop has been in existence. We've written about “night,” about “an encounter with a stranger,” about persons, places, and events. We've even responded successfully to the challenge to “write a poem that makes no sense.”

Each week's lesson comes with many examples of published work. We take turns reading these and then talk about issues related to writing — techniques, style, form, content. The hope is that the work will inspire us and that we'll find a starting point to begin our own.

The writing workshop has had a profound and lasting impact on each of us. Some of our writing is taken from personal experience, both in and out of prison, a lot of it comes from the pain of being incarcerated, away from family and especially children. Sometimes the writing just comes from a place never visited before. We all agree that being in the workshop has made a distinct difference in how we see ourselves. To explore this, we decided to respond to a series of questions about it.

What brought you to the workshop initially?

Iris: “I knew I liked to write and wanted to learn the proper techniques.”

Lisa: “I'd come from a battered relationship. The group appeared to offer a safe place to start to figure out who and what I was.”

Jan: “I went because I was looking for anything to do that would help me forget where 1 was. The first time I attended I didn't feel able to write, although I wanted to. My mother had a gift for words. She could express herself very well and I wanted so much to be like her. But I wasn't like her. In class that first night, Hettie had to lead me through the experience of visualizing a story. I imagined a tinker who drove a battered car on a dusty road. I could see the place he traveled. I could smell the sagebrush and hear the lullaby of the ocean. But I couldn't put it on paper.”

What was it like the first time you read aloud something you wrote?

Lisa: “I was scared to death.”

Jan: “I was afraid my words wouldn't be understood.”

Iris: “Scary. I didn't like it.”

What has the workshop done for you?

Lisa: “Hettie took what I thought of as personal and private and made me see it as potentially an art form.”

Kathy: “When I was in the women's movement, and a whole generation of poetry was
created
out of the rising identity of women, I found myself writing some poetry, but I never thought that I could do it as a regular part of my life. I grew up clinging to the rational. Emotional currents had, for me, the terror of loss of control. Yet poetry always called me. It was my way of letting go and feeling those inner currents — dreaming, hoping, crying, and fearing. With the writing workshop, I had found a space that would, on a regular basis, give me permission to look at the inner self and walk in it.”

Miriam: “I've learned to express myself better. If I write anything that hurts, it's like getting it out of the way. I don't have to worry about it again. I used to hold things in and lash out. By writing, I can actually calm myself and avoid hurting someone's feelings.”

Precious: “Writing about my daughter gave me an opportunity to express some feelings I had about our relationship. I work with women in here who have children in foster care. Losing children is a tremendous psychological loss. My poems gave me the opportunity to write that pain out.”

Iris: “I feel differently about my whole life now. Instead of getting angry, I just go and write it. That's a change for me. Through the workshop I've learned to let those feelings out in a productive manner. And as I write more, I've begun to discover another part of me.”

Judy: “The workshop is a place in this environment where we let go of the distractions and just work. After we read what Hettie brings in, we sit quietly, preparing to write. The energy of that quietness, that collective quietness, is the moment creativity gets inspired in that room. What's interesting, looking back at the process, is that the content of what I write about often sneaks up on me. For example, Hettie once gave us an exercise to write a short prose piece in which we focus on pacing by slowing down the action through use of minute detail. I tried to think of an expetience where time seemed to stand still, and found myself telling a story of being molested by a French tutor. I was writing about an event that I had never been able to tell anyone about. I felt a rush of energy as something that had been moldering inside me was released.”

Have you come to think differently about your writing process?

Jan: “I never wrote that story of the tinker. In fact, for a long time I did not go back to the workshop. But when I did, I found myself looking to learn. And I did. I'm not sure I can identify pace and rhythm and drama by pointing to an example of these in my writing. What I can do is sense that what words I have strung together have those qualities. I feel, I remember, I write. And sometimes I'm just very fortunate to end up with a piece that works.”

Precious: “My earliest memories now are of how clinical my writing was when I started. I guess that was to be expected since I had just finished a degree in psychology. Still, I wasn't pleased with Hettie's constant reminders of just how dry my writing was. Wasn't poetry a mosaic of passion, sadness, and happiness — all psychological expressions of our experience? I wanted desperately to write wonderful words about my children and my family — it's important that we do things in here to let our families know we are okay. Then I read this line from another poet — ‘hit from time to time with lonely postcards.' It moved me deeply and helped me to write a poem to someone from my past who was, like me, imprisoned. This one didn't get the usual ‘too analytical' comment from Hettie, and I was very pleased. It gave me hope, convinced me again that even if I'm incarcerated, my mind isn't.”

Judy: “At first, I would balk at taking any word out, as though each word represented a piece of my soul. But gradually I learned that a flood of words can muddy up the picture, that often less is more. Making a poem is like carving a sculpture out of rough rock. I get this intense pleasure out of carving away words. It feels like a spiritual experience. Once that happened, that's when I felt, you know, I'm a poet.”

The workshop has published two books —
More In Than Out
in 1992 and
Aliens at the Border
in 1997. There is an interesting story behind the title of one of these publications. One night, Hettie brought into the workshop a photo with a caption “Aliens at the Bordet,” and one of the women wrote a poem about it. The title seemed to be a perfect description of the group. As Miriam said at the time, “I think it is perfect because sometimes I feel as if I'm looking out from the other side of the world.” What were some of your reactions when you finally did see your work published out in the world?

Iris: “It felt good that I had written something well enough and purposeful enough to be brought to the attention of the public.”

Lisa: “I was proud of myself— and that was a strange feeling. It also felt encouraging, I think. It's one thing to have Hettie say you have potential, that you're a great writer. Then to have your work published and know that people are buying it — that's a whole different thing.”

Jan: “When I was young and full of dreams, I used to tell my friends in school I was going to ‘make the books.' It was my way of saying that I would achieve some wonderful thing in my life that everyone would know about. Seeing my work, pieces of my life laid out in our book, made me feel I had fulfilled that prophecy.”

What lasting effects has your experience in the workshop left you with?

Lisa: “Many, but one is a real desire for writing — not just a desire, but a real
joy.
I consider myself a writer, a good writer.”

Kathy: “Poetry and my work in the workshop have become a part of my life in the way some people meditate or pray. I go to poetry to help me discover the mysteries of my thoughts and feelings. It is a path into the world that is always present but whose presence we are not always aware of or do not always value. Poetry is also a craft. After struggling with emotions that I should be able to spontaneously write a poem from, I am slowly learning the patience to take a thought and work with it.”

Iris: “I can disperse my pain through my pen.”

Judy: “My poetry has also been a way for me to express feelings of loss and shame and hope as a mother in prison, and my growing sense of remorse for the terrible losses I have caused others by my crime. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the workshop has played a role in my reclaiming myself and my humanity.”

For all of us the writing workshop has been a joy, a burden, but most of all a release from the cinderblock walls that surround us year after year. We assume that we will be there, to release ourselves, every Wednesday. When we presented a reading of our poetry to the prison population for the first time, everyone wondered why we hadn't done it sooner. But first we had to learn to take ourselves seriously as writers. Not only finding our voices, but also believing that these voices mean something beyond our private world.

1998, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility Bedford Hills, New York

Charlie says to me, “We gotta get ready for that new facility mag, get us our voices heard.” He's chewing on a nip of his cigar, which I despise, the stogie like a pen on the tripod of his hand.

“This is prison, Chuck, not a facility. In here they don't facilitate a friggin' thing.”

Charlie can't listen and talk in the same context. “Prison writing, man, that's where it's at.” He's staring at a blank screen above my shoulder.

My brain lines up a reasonable response: How long you been down, you big stupid ape? “It makes no difference, bro,” I say instead. This is one redneck I won't offend.

From here on in it's a one-way conversation, two hundred and eighty pounds of duress humming on about Jack Henry Abbott writing his way out of the joint because he had the guts to speak up, how prison writing breaks down the walls of isolation, how the pen is mightier than . . .

The thoughts begin to soar V-formation:

Funny that in the end the sword proved to be Abbott's master, / With Mailer for an editor I'd write my way out of hell. /He also did a little snitching there, if the truth be told. I

But they just dive off and fall away. I wave my hands at the curtains of smoke Charlie has installed in my cell, and he knows that's enough of him for one morning.

I ride the inside track, and within an hour I find out why the warden has seen fit that a few caged birds should go to print. As every con knows, democracy in the prison setting is just another word for “never,” so when each inmate group petitions to put out their own newsletters, the warden has an aberration to prevent. (Manifold printing costs, new jobs for x inmate staffs to type, edit, and lay out page after page of burning prose and slick graphics on blazing 486 computers. Forget it. They end up smarter than the guards. Then the salaried censorship squad for all whiners who will harp on and on about an evil system and skewed justice, dire living, exploitation, Bill of Rights violations and conspiracy theories ad nauseam.) So what is a reasonably sly warden to do? He will locate two or three lifers who would have been Nobel laureates if not for lack of opportunity, to offer them the chance of their lifetime. It is time his prisoners be heard!

He will leave out one small detail: This is to be a one-time venture, something he can show the inmate groups so their nagging will rest. You will have one facility-sponsored publication, one single vehicle of choice for all your groaning pains and visions. Come and spill out your guts, dudes, in unity of song!

There will be plenty of Dostoyevskys and Malcolms in this number, but from the groups Mr. Warden will hear a single chorus: RUB IT ON YOUR CHEST ‘CAUSE WE AIN'T RIDIN' SHOTGUN. His calculated effort will be thus consummated, and he will smile to the portrait of Reagan on his wall. Hey, guys, I handed it to you on a mess hall tray and you declined.