Prison Book Program

Anyone seen this before or seen projects similar to this? Here is a link to a prison book program based out of Quincy, Mass:

http://www.prisonbookprogram.org/index.html

"This is Bullshit"

Britt and I wanted to continue focusing on the creative process rather than the final product, so we decided to do a workshop of de-constructive art. We conceived of this layout:

-everyone got a blank sheet
-with colored pencils only, everyone had 10 min to draw a nature scene.
-then, we told them to pass the sheet to their right.
-with washable markers only, everyone had 7 min to draw civilization over the nature scene passed to them
-then, we passed again
-with black sharpie only, everyone had 7 min to fundamentally alter whatever was in front of them
-then, we passed again
-everyone had to pick their favorite 1/3 of the picture, then cut that out in whatever shape they like. We mounted those favorite parts onto black paper.
-finally, discussion altogether about why the piece was your favorite, how the activity went, how it felt to pass your art and change other people's art, etc.

We originally didn't want to tell the women that their art would be passed, but in the workshop at the beginning I did accidentally tell them that "you won't end with the paper you begin with", then Britt cut me off. So some of the women who listened got that clue.

Climax of the workshop: When everyone was using sharpie to fundamentally alter the paper in front of them, one woman started to say that she wanted to leave (Let's say her name was Shelly). Shelly hated the activity, thought it was bullshit, didn't see the point of it, and really just wanted to leave because she was extremely pissed. Shelly's friend who was drawing over her civilization drawing apologized if it was her fault, but Shelly assured that "I'm not mad at you for drawing over it -because you're just doing what they told you." Britt and I told her that she could always leave if she felt uncomfortable; she said she knew that, then said some more loud statements about the workshop, then left. Britt then told everyone that the workshop was about de-constructive art, and one woman made a comment about how Shelly's exit shows how intensely personal art can be. We were all quite shaken by Shelly leaving, so people were really ready to talk about it. After Shelly's friend left to see if Shelly was OK and if she wanted to come back and talk, Shelly said no and just wanted to know why we made the workshop like that. We did our best to explain the goal of the workshop - to expose ourselves to the entire process of de-constructive art and explore how we feel about it. Who owns art? Everyone who made a part, or just the first person, or just the last person, or whoever liked it best, or no one, etc? Must art be so personal? How does it feel to have your art taken away? Etc. We really wished Shelly would have stayed to discuss her feelings and thoughts, because there was never meant to be a right answer or a decision that de-constructive art was good or right. Her comments would have been valuable in the space. It eventually got into a great discussion beyond de-constructive and into ideas of nature, civilization, why women created what they did, etc.

Britt and Becky, Collective Poems

Britt and I enjoyed a spectacular workshop last week. We've been wanting to focus on the process of creative expression and less on the product, since we've been feeling that the latter has been getting a lot more emphasis in our workshops, unintentionally. So, we devised a low-tech workshop to construct work together and focus on the writing process:

-We handed out blank paper to everyone, and said to label the lines 1-10
-Then, we told everyone to write the same line in Line 1: "Scraped up and put back down". We used this line because we wanted it to go in any direction--it's pronoun-less, direction-less, time-less, etc.
-After everyone wrote those words in line 1, we passed the papers to our left. Then, everyone would write down a new line in Line 3, and try to connect it to the line in Line 1. (We apparently didn't communicate this so clearly, and someone chose to write random lines without any connection to the other lines)
-We kept passing the papers with everyone filling in the odd Lines, then we reversed the direction and filled in the even numbered lines.
-We each read the poems out loud once, then read them out loud a second time: the second time, we took notes on each poem while the reader was reading, and we referred to each poem as "Britt's poem" if Britt was the reader, etc.
-We then had a discussion on each poem: thoughts, impressions, favorites, confusions, criticism--which was really important, to discuss what worked and what didn't

We then did a second prompt: "Set in motion", with a shorter number of lines, and we also read them aloud twice. The women really loved the workshop, and it was definitely one of mine and Britt's favorites. Here are some poems from our workshop:

Set in motion

A lit candle and lotion

That landslide you put me on, it sent me back fast.

Shivers up my spine, I can’t walk

You shook my world. How do I move forward?

Frozen, I want to make a move – my body says yes, but my mind says NO!

Legs like Jello. Feet tingly and mouth dry.

--------------------------------------------------------

Scraped up and put back down again

We found elevation, you gave me altitude, we had an atmosphere

A helping hand, I was lifted by a friend

Lifted from below

Thought I couldn’t get any lower than where I’d been

To the depths I fell, now how will I recover?

I stood up straight and just lifted my chin

And the right side of my jaw swelled up again

Now I knock on my window and let myself in

Hello is anybody in here?

The Alpha and the Omega where it ends is where it begins

But you’ll die forever if you don’t forgive yourself of your sins.

Workshop 7: Chen and Rachel

This week's workshop was centered on the idea of space, the expansive or restrictive inner space of a house and the memories associated with buildings and homes.

We brought in two reading selections: an excerpt from Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" and from Margeurite Duras' "Writing."

The entire text of the "Invisible Cities" can be found here.

Calvino's excerpt was on a city of the dead, very image driven and somewhat nonpersonal, an intellectual exercise. Duras' is much more personal, about her experience as a writer and how space (the interior of a house, the surrounding grounds) affects her writing habits.

For introductions I asked for the women's names, per usual, and a vivid memory of a space they used to inhabit. This actually turned into a very long and wonderful discussion about people's pasts, the houses they used to live in. One woman mentioned how she always used to seek out the basement as her private space, and someone else said that for her, that place was in a tree. The discussion evolved into memories of grandparents, death, and ghosts.

We then went on to read the excerpts, and no one had much to say about them, some were eager to start writing.

The writing prompt is as follows:

For prompt 1 I gave them printouts from this website of rural ruins:
http://community.livejournal.com/rural_ruin/

1. Based on your picture of an abandoned home, imagine what the home looked like fifty years ago (or when it was newly built). Who lived in it? What did it smell like, feel like, upon walking in? You may want to describe it very specifically, going from a view of its outside and then continuing inside, taking us on a "tour." The picture is only a starting off point; you can imagine the inside of the house to be anything you'd like it to be.

And then for prompt 2,

2. Remember the first place you ever lived? Look out of one of the windows of that building. What do you see? (What you see can either be what it looked like back then, or now). If you are illustrating, use the frame of the postcard paper as the frame of the house: that is, fill in the whole card with what you see.


I think that because of the beginning discussion, people really wanted to write about their own homes, so for prompt 1 it was less about looking at a random ruin and imagining, and more about describing a memory. I gave two prompts because there was a visual element to it and one of the women, who didn't speak English very well, ended up copying a drawing. She also composed a poem in her head and then read it aloud to us from memory.

Rachel brought up a good point about the structure of workshops because of how well the discussion went. How much of class should be discussion and how much reading and writing? It's hard to say... sometimes when a discussion is going really well, I'm hesitant to curb it and move on to the next activity. When it came to the writing itself, Rachel thought that people didn't write with the same openness as they had when they were speaking. had they exhausted what they had to say? Was the page a more daunting place to put down words than in a "storytelling" group discussion?

Cold-readings in Medium

So, for the past four weeks or so Evan and I have been reading a couple plays in our workshops. This kind of format is called a "cold-reading" because its based on the idea that none of us have read the play before, at least not together.
For several weeks until the first play workshop, we had consistently been having the same three women attending our Monday evening workshops, give or take one new woman who changed every time. This had been wonderful, and four weeks ago, we brought in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie". Having the same steady three women was so fortunate because it let us cast the play (it is essentially a three person play, with one pivotal fourth character at the end) deliberately so that each woman was very well suited to her role, and had something in that she could really get a kick out of. The woman who had never been in before said she was feeling quiet but wanted to listen, and so she was assigned the fourth character. The reading was wonderful. Within the first ten lines, everyone was on board (whereas before we began one woman in particular had expressed fear she would "sound stupid" if she mispronounced big words--this woman is a fiery poet by the way), and we were off! I even interjected one or two teeny pieces of directions when I had the sense we were comfortable with it, and those were taken and it even gave the reading more intensity and commitment. We got almost exactly half way through before we had to leave. All of the women seemed to feel really good (I think getting assigned a role, and being solely responsible for it can be so exciting and empowering) afterwards, and promised that they would come next week.
The next week, though, completely unexpectedly, we had ten women in our workshop, including only two of the three women from the week before. Evan and I had planned to finish "Glass Menagerie", but with this many people, had to make a quick decision that it didn't make sense (It was so silly because it was the one workshop we had come in thinking we already had a great plan for, whereas all the weeks before we had plan as and bs and cs!). The two women were disappointed, it was clear, and simultaneously were telling the other women how cool it had been last week but also saying that it wouldn't be the same if we reassigned the third role to someone else (and, after all, it would still leave seven women with no roles, unless we just rotated through, but that wasn't really the style we were going for!). So, we ended up improvising a workshop in which we did word at a time ensemble poetry. Each of us would say a word, and we'd have a poem, and then we'd repeat it louder, and by the second or third time around at least one woman would have it memorized and she would belt it out and get some applause. It was fun, and pretty supportive, and more based in groupmind than usual.
The next week we brought in the second half of Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller's "The Crucible". We had four women, none of the ones from our first "Glass Menagerie" (they each had a visitor or were in Orange). We got through the first act with perfect timing. The women were really into it; I had been hesitant because of the sort of intentionally stale environment of Salem that the play is set in, afraid that the women might be "bored". That was a stupid thought. When the first woman delivered the first line, I wondered if she had been rehearsing! She had this energy that gave the whole reading momentum. Even the woman who had a hoarse voice and who had been a hesitatnt to read was asking for more parts at the end. There are a lot of little roles in the play in addition to the bigger ones, and Evan and I were reading some as well, which was so fun. Having a well written structure to explore and play in can be really freeing; for example there can be a scene in which someone is yelling at another, or suspicious of another, and it's never tense because there is this understanding that we are sort of visiting another world. Whatever-don't get me started, I think I am going on a bit. We can talk about why I (and others) had such a good time in person! The women asked to keep their scripts, and all excitedly promised to come next week.
The next week (yesterday) only one woman was there (the other three were all in Orange, I think). And we kept going with the Crucible, the three of us getting to the end of the penultimate act. We had a really nice time.
The trajectory we are on (loosely) is that next time I am going to bring in some two person scenes from different plays, and assign women different roles and after reading through them, maybe even stand them up and play around with acting them out a little more. And the workshop after that, ideally, we are going to start writing some scenes on our own, starting from brainstorms (and maybe some improvs). Maybe the women will partner up, maybe not.
One thing that is frustrating, which we have all talked about, is that participation is so inconsistent (even, as we learned, when it seems like its going to be). I think this is mainly because of Orange and discipline. Last night the guard came in and told us that one of the women in Orange wanted to give us a message that she was in Orange but that she wanted to make sure she could still participate next time, and that she wanted to very much. It's so (explitive explitive) frustrating. But, despite the length of the plays that we have read and their need for multiple workshops, the workshops have still managed to be sustainable individually, which is a tribute to the women's patience and commitment and curiosity, and to the writing.
I apologize for not writing in weeks. It's all up there now. Have a great break--it snowed today!

Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: November 18, 2007
NY Times

For the first time in a generation, the question of whether the death penalty deters murders has captured the attention of scholars in law and economics, setting off an intense new debate about one of the central justifications for capital punishment.

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.

The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise. One influential study looked at 3,054 counties over two decades.

“I personally am opposed to the death penalty,” said H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University and an author of a study finding that each execution saves five lives. “But my research shows that there is a deterrent effect.”

The studies have been the subject of sharp criticism, much of it from legal scholars who say that the theories of economists do not apply to the violent world of crime and punishment. Critics of the studies say they are based on faulty premises, insufficient data and flawed methodologies.

The rest here

I saw this article in the NY Times over the weekend and thought it would be of interest. The first time I remember thinking about the issue of the death penalty was in sixth or seventh grade, where my english teacher divided us into two camps: for and against the death penalty. I was put into the "against" category, even though all of us were pretty ambivalent about the issue and no one particularly wanted to be against. This summer I was tracking the case of Kenneth Foster, who was going to be executed in Texas (where I'm from), for being a sort of "accomplice" to a murder when what he actually did was sit in the back of the car. His sentence was commuted to life. While I followed his case I researched the death penalty a little bit and it REALLY surprised me that the electric chair was still used in some states (or at least allowed to be in use), and so was hanging. I thought those forms of execution were archaic and had gone out of fashion, and it was really jarring to think they were still utilized.

Anyway, there you have it. I don't really know if it's helpful to have economists debate over this issue: I mean, people aren't currency, and I have a feeling that any of these studies must be deeply flawed.

Workshop 6: Chen and Rachel

We took excerpts from "I Remember", a text by Joe Brainard that were basically memories by Brainard, each sentence starting with "I Remember." We discussed how the prose was like a poem, the syntax, visual associations that were akin to collage (Brainard also worked in the visual art collage format). The women liked writing their own "I remembers"... a lot of them cut right to the chase, such vivid memories, small and sincere and amazing. One woman wrote about her grandmother...

I often forget that not everyone sees things the way I do, or interpret them, and it's a great pleasure to be surprised by someone else's point of view that opens a window into things... There was one Brainard memory that went like this:

"I remember regretting things I didn’t do."

I interpreted it as a memory of regret, so perhaps Brainard no longer regretted. One of the women said it might be that he was regretting again. So interesting...

It was a little hard to discuss Brainard's stuff because people were eager to write their own memories-- and his are so specific to the 70s that perhaps it was a little hard to connect with... they were also pretty simplistic. But it was a good jumping off point. Workshop ended early then and Rachel asked them to write from the point of view of an object in the room. Someone wrote a really great "surveillance" poem from the POV of a fly. Pretty rad.

Teaching, especially workshop style, is such a matter of exchange. I'm pretty grateful for everything people have shared with me and opened up about, and I realize an inherent inequality about this give and take procedure. We sort of started this conversation last Saturday, but some of it was about balancing what we are able to offer vs. what the women are interested in, their background. I still need to crystallize my thoughts on this, so look for a later post.