From Student to Teacher: The Perspective of a Prison Poet

I realized early in my prison journey that we were all students because of all the time in a day we had to study and ponder things. Later on, I came to realize that we were all teachers also. The teaching part of me did not come into my full consciousness until I learned from Judith Tannenbaum, Diana Henning and others in their writing groups. I have come to believe you can learn from anyone or thing – a stone, a sparrow, a dog, a cat – silence, pain or a dream. Everything has something to offer when you are open as the sky.

Long before I found out I was an artist, I gleaned I was a student of life – through books, reflections and observations. In prison, I have more time in a day than teaching artists and people in general in the free world - time to read, write, study and ponder. Time moves passed you so fast in the free world. (Read More)

Writing from New Folsom: Work by Spoon Jackson’s Students

Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation is said to be a faded memory, a lost thought that no longer occurs. But I don’t care what is said. And I don’t care what is thought.

Though it’s true that day after day and year after year, for years and years on end they try to kill rehabilitation and creation, with condemnation and correction.

But year after year they still fail to obliterate the passion of an artist’s soul.

And I hear rehabilitation day after day and year after year.

I hear it in the scratching of pencils across paper, I hear it in the newly formed notes on an instrument that sill remains, and I hear it boldly announced in the poet’s words. (Read More)

The Birth of a Nonprofit Organization

The story of Voices UnBroken’s birth is my story. It is a story I have told often, yet each time I marvel at what a journey it has been since that day almost a decade ago when I innocently decided to ‘start a workshop for the girls.’ I was a junior at Bennington College and had returned home to The Bronx for the winter to do an internship at an arts organization in Manhattan. There were some male writers going to Rikers to facilitate a poetry workshop for incarcerated boys attending Island Academy High School. I asked if I could join them, mostly out of curiosity. Growing up, Rikers Island was a place people talked about, but only in the most casual way. “Hey, you seen Gary?” “You didn’t hear? He’s been on Rikers since last month.” Or, “like I told him, he better stop doin’ that stuff ‘cause I ain’t goin’ out to no jail to visit him or send him packages or nothin’.” (Read More)