Workshop 4: Chen and Rachel

A really interesting workshop... lots of things on my mind...

Rachel brought in a poem called "Safe Subjects" by Yusef Komunyakaa, from his collection of poetry "Copacetic." There are a lot of dense, frightening imagery in this poem-- very evocative and very sensual. can't seem to steer away from that in the poetry that we like. Interestingly enough, some of the women had a harder time with this poem than the Neruda poem, which had more abstract imagery. Perhaps because of Komunyakaa's specificity, it is hard to extrapolate that into your own personal life. Rachel also had the thought that since one of the women was a really great writer, she tends to control the direction of conversation, if she's confused than other people are hesitant to challenge that confusion.

So we began with a warmup... I took lines from the poem we brought in and wrote one line on each sheet of paper. I gave each woman one paper. They would write the next line, fold the paper over so that only their line is visible, and pass it on to the next person. It had some hilarious results... if a poem started out as funny, it would end seriously, and vice versa. The tonal range is just huge, and the sort of freedom it allows is really great.

Then we read the poem and talked about it. One line really called out to some of the women "Redemptive as a straight razor/ against a jugular vein--". One of the women essentially said that if someone were to cross her, that was how she would act. She wouldn't take any shit. So parts of the poem were really concrete, but others somewhat confusing.

Then we had them write a poem themselves, incorporating repetition drawn from the poem. These turned out really great. One of the women mentioned "railroad tracks" in her poem and I inquired about that, thinking it was a metaphor. Turns out she was talking about shooting up. I was a bit taken aback, especially when she confronted us very honestly about how we felt about coming into prison, considering our backgrounds as college students. This is the first time that this has ever happened to me-- someone questioning our purpose in this space and comparing and contrasting our lifestyles... I did not know what to say at first and then told her that I wanted it to be a safe space, no censorship... And she said she knew that, but she really wanted our opinions on what it felt like to be there... Rachel can speak more on this.

I am very glad that she opened up this conversation: the essence of why we even go to prison in the first place. She then went on to talk about writing habits in and out of prison, and wasted talent.

We've had some women come to workshops more than once and it's good to see familiar faces in workshop.