March 8th, 2010
Jill McDonough, who has been teaching in Massachusetts’ prisons through Boston University’s Prison Education Program, has a fantastic blog. She’s currently writing about each class session, sharing the poem up for discussion and her students’ responses. She also has a great blog roll that includes some fantastic prison-related photography.
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March 3rd, 2010
“Your vocation is that place where your deep gladness meets the world’s great hunger.” Frederick Buechner
Tags: Frederick Buechner, vocation
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February 19th, 2010
Please watch the incredible book trailer Michel Wenzer has made for By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives.
Tags: book trailer, Judith Tannenbaum, Spoon Jackson
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February 2nd, 2010
Most of the men I know in prison (I mostly know men) are serving some kind of life sentence. Some — like Spoon — are serving life without possibility of parole. Some — like Coties — have a sentence so long (99 years) that it stands as a life sentence. Others — like Elmo — are serving term-to-life (in his case, 7-to-life, a sentence meant to last about 13 years in the era when he was convicted, but he’s now served over 30 years on that sentence).
Those with term-to-life sentences have to go before the Board of Prison Terms periodically and make a case for why they should be given a release date. There’s lots to share about this process, but for now here’s a very interesting article about one man — Lonnie Morris, whom Spoon, Coties, Elmo, and I all knew at San Quentin 25 years ago — and his experience with the Board.
Tags: lifers, Lonnie Morris
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January 22nd, 2010
Beginning to set up readings for By Heart. Of course, Spoon — 32 years down on a life without possibility of parole sentence — can’t join me to read in person, but Michel Wenzer is making a film of Spoon reading from one of his chapters that I’ll show. The schedule so far:
Thursday April 8, 2010 7 PM Diesel, a Bookstore 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, CA
Sunday April 11, 2010 4 PM Booksmith 1644 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA
Wednesday April 14, 2010 7:30 PM Tattered Cover Book Store 1628 16th Street, Denver, CO
Wednesday August 4, 2010 6 PM Sacramento Poetry Center @ Central Library 828 I Street, Sacramento, CA
Tags: "By Heart: Poetry Prison and Two Lives"
Posted in By Heart, prison, prison, poem, readings | No Comments »