Arts educate, inspire changes in prisoners
Maximum security prisoners are writing poetry and learning how to draw, thanks to a grant from Community Funds to the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project. The process transforms both the prisoners and the artists who work with them, according to Kyes Stevens, who started the program after seeing successful models at work across the country.
Stevens, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence with advanced degrees in women's studies and poetry, told the story of one man in his 30s who came up to her after the third session in St. Clair County's maximum security prison.
"Before this class, I never read poetry, I never thought about it," he said. "It was nothing that I had any room for in my life. But now I realize that I have been a poet all my life."
In her view, this prisoner truly has a gift for poetry and has seen the possibility for transformation in just a short time.
Another participant said the class teaches him to reach into himself. "I have to think and be self-critical of my own work...I can, through my own mind, create something beautiful, and hopefully some day, profound."
In one class, a staff member from The Community Foundation heard 20 students talk enthusiastically about a visit the previous week from national award-winning poet Jean Valentine. They were eager to find out what she thought of their work.
Time in the classroom is precious to the participants, Stevens said, as they learn what she called the craft of poetry, read the work of others and revise their own efforts.
"There's an incredible classroom dynamic, with someone who has a third-grade education next to someone with a master's degree," she explained. "Everything I take in," they read. They just gobble it up."
Stevens saw the success of similar programs around the country and looks forward to increasing the number of teachers and the number of classes in Alabama.
"Every artist or scholar who has taught has been transformed by the experience, along with the prisoners," she said.
At the end of each year, an anthology is published to show off the students’ work and validate their efforts. See below for two poems from the most recent publication.
For more information about the program, contact Stevens directly.
Arts and culture
Programs/activities that reach out to underserved populations Peace In American Town
by Ada McKenzie
At the back fence calling,
Mr. Jones!
At the back fence calling,
Mr. Tyrone
At the back fence calling,
Mr. Brown
My blueberry pie’s the best in town.
At the back fence calling,
Johnny Jones!
At the back fence calling,
Bennie Lean
At the back fence calling,
Buddy Brown!
come on let’s bat a ball around.
At the back fence calling,
Neighbor! Neighbor!
At the back fence calling,
Neighbor! Friend!
At the back fence calling,
Neighbor! When is all this trouble gonna end?
At the back fence calling,
colored, white.
At the back fence calling,
Gentile, Jew
At the back fence calling,
Neighbor!
At the back fence calling,
YOU!! If I Were In Florida
by Randy Williams
If I were in Florida I would sing about
Clothes being folded, lawn chairs collapsed
Nightclubs with neon lights
Police cars move, turtles patrolling the streets
The sound of gunshots ringing out
Church bells beckoning believers to come worship
Dogs chasing ambulances, mimicking, chasing their tails
buses like hungry whales swallowing up people
Fire engines attacking matches burning paper houses!
People of the city moving, pacing, imitating roaches
I’d read a good book, eat pasta—stringy yarn
wishing that time would turn to yester-year
when life was quiet as an assembly of mourners
giving my mother Rosemary—a breath of fresh air.
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