By Shaun T. Griffin
October 2024. This preamble is for the scores of males who’ve been within the Razor Wire Poetry Workshop which, for over three a long time, saved lives, saved them out of jail, gave voice to many poets, and led to numerous friendships that saved me returning to show poetry. It is usually for anybody exterior jail wanting in, questioning what occurs when the metal door closes and the souls migrate to a sort of purgatory. Nothing is so fragile as a poem and but, paradoxically, nothing is so sturdy. In these thirty years it has damaged bars, set males free, and taught non-readers methods to transfer within the forest of language. Greater than all of this, it has given buy to an thought: that with labor born of affection one thing better than violence and hatred can come up from the depths of the yard — the beginning of a poem, an curiosity in studying, a need to form one’s story in phrases, and a reckoning with the self that had little hope of being reckoned with. As a result of poetry is usually seen as being innocent, it strikes in regards to the jail freely, virtually at will however after all, its energy is such that those that uncover it could possibly select to say issues that heretofore couldn’t be mentioned: “I’m, I’ve worth, I consider, I’ve value.” Jail is, by definition, a spot that nullifies. Poetry, within the phrases of Vassar Miller, is “a confrontation with the deepest self,” and “a method of ordering life, however it’s additionally typically an indication of a nature terribly delicate to ache — as properly, after all, as to pleasure.” (Coronary heart’s Invention, 1988)
Once I began instructing in 1989, I had no thought one thing known as a workshop would come from a humble upper-division English class. I had taken over the category for a colleague on the faculty however after just a few semesters the grades, the good-time credit score, the falsehoods of being considering English for the flawed causes led to me to cease. I lastly requested the boys who wished to remain — for no credit score, no day off their sentence, no recognition save studying to learn and write poetry — to affix me on this experiment. A handful stayed and from that meager group grew the workshop. Over time we revealed sixteen biennial journals of Razor Wire, and the boys revealed books of poetry, memoir, and plenty of poems in literary journals exterior. Many essays, articles, and interviews have been written or recorded in regards to the workshop and it has continued with out cease as a result of it’s lifesaving. Many of the males wouldn’t say these phrases since you don’t say issues like that on the yard. However they arrive, each different week, hoping that the phrases on the web page identify one thing — an thought bigger than themselves — a poem of transcendence. That’s a tall order for any poet however with out their presence within the room, nobody grows. I insist they offer one another constructive suggestions and I cease the dialogue if it goes south. I’ve been examined, threatened, and mollified, had males rise up for me and ministers maintain house for me within the chapel. Sadly, I’ve watched males die who didn’t must die and I’ve realized corrections is a euphemism for ache. However there are a lot of, many individuals attempting to alter this equation. And that’s the reason this was written: to supply a unique sort of decision to time served that doesn’t price cash, doesn’t require a level, doesn’t want approval. All that’s wanted is need and a willingness to go on a journey with individuals who have been given a sentence to lie idle, to attend for the state to determine what might be completed. Into the nice interim that’s their life comes the poem and its messenger. That is how you alter the assemble of self. That is the way you look onerous at what was left and what’s entrance of you. That is how you start to articulate what can change into of a thoughts, irrespective of how confined. That is the way you learn to stay, how you progress total globes with a stanza, the way you weep over a line from Dickinson. That is how, in brief, you save your life.
