The Wake

Offender, brother, inmate, lover, convict, scholar, prisoner, father, murderer, college graduate, drug dealer, painter, gang member, husband . . . Check a box, many boxes. Frame them, name them, ignore them, try to train them. Soon it is clear - these men can’t be held down. They are the Stillwater Poetry Group (SPG), word warriors who meet Tuesday nights inside prison walls. Lit 3 quickly fills with men of varying ages, races, ethnicities, religions, gang affiliations, ideologies, and cell blocks; differences weigh heavily; you can feel it in the air. Still, they run inside, jump into seats, pencils in hand… every teacher’s dream. For many these moments are like Thanksgiving.

“This is a feast where we all get fed,” says Carl Wesley, visual artist, SPG poet, and author of many haikus about Spanish Harlem. Wesley is a graduate of Parsons School of Design, has a M.A. in Education from Harvard, was addicted to crack, convicted of second-degree murder and currently serves a 19-year sentence at Stillwater. He sits next to Sarith Peou, a poet from Cambodia who still has nightmares about growing up under the Khmer Rouge. Peou is a former social worker serving a life sentence for murder. He responds to Why are you in SPG? by writing, “Compressed thoughts swell in my head / Hurt so much I wish I was dead / I want to release them, drop them like lead / I don’t have the strength to live them so I change them into poems” . The circle claps for Peou, often silent for hours on end. “What I observe and feel touched by the most is that people get together. Since I joined this group people will say hi to me; before I didn’t exist here” says Peou.

The SPG, consisting of twenty-five men, many with life sentences, has been meeting for two years. Led by incarcerated poet David Doppler, SPG formed with the help of literacy teacher Pauline Geraci, recipient of numerous correctional education awards for her programs. This year she produced the first-ever Stillwater spoken word event where15 SPG poets performed for 90 peers and correctional staff. Geraci also programs the Step Channel, an in-house television station that runs videos of the performance repeatedly, stirring interest in the group. Consequently, there’s a waiting list larger than the group itself. Doppler interviews prospective members during breaks from his job networking the education department’s computers.

Doppler and Geraci work hard creating opportunities for SPG to connect with outside artists. Notably, they worked with poet Wang Ping, through a LOFT Literary Center Grant, and produced the anthology Misfortune’s Wealth. Lately they’ve connected with Twin Cities poet Reggie Harris and his “in the belly” artist collective. Harris received a MRAC Grant to bring outside artists inside to conduct poetry workshops around themes determined by group members. Recently, the group hosted “An Inside/Outside Joint” fundraiser at Intermedia Arts for his prison arts programming, hoping to bring more artists inside Stillwater. Poets including Emmanuel Ortiz, Mankwe Ndosi, Ed Bok Lee, and Douglas Ewart performed with the SPG poets (who performed via video clips) to a packed house of SPG family, friends, and community supporters.

Despite the group’s “success,” Doppler struggles with tension amongst members and responds by assembling an “inner-core” of members to facilitate group decisions. “My vision for the SPG,” says Doppler, “is for it to be the engine that powers social change, not just inside these walls but in a much more elaborate scope.” Still the SPGs goal of realizing change is hard and starts with each man. Ja’far-Rahotep, SPG core member, co-facilitated a session about African history with outside artist E.g. Bailey. “My poetry is the entrance into one world and the escape from the other,” declares Rahotep in his collected poems titled “Rahotep Speaks.” His work has earned him the moniker “Professor,” sparked by fellow SPG poet Carl Wesley who comments, “Ja’far’s presentation was magnificent, it felt like I was back in a college classroom.”

Poet Desdamona, who co-facilitated workshops on the value of a man/woman and American dreams/nightmares, shares her experience: “I walk in unafraid - cautiously aware of my smile [...] concerned that my freedom is a slap in the face to their reality.” She continues to volunteer her time, recently giving a writing prompt using Talib Kweli’s “For Women” (the Nina Simone inspired track). Scanning the lyrics, they immediately outline their own pieces. Desdamona scribbles, “A circle of brothers in the most unexpected place….” Her mind catches on the next poetic line but continues, “On my way home I contemplate the reality that any one of those men could be me. And if this is to be their destiny – what is the one thing I can give of me to help make it complete? I am here for a reason unseen but felt. And sometimes I feel as though I am there specifically to learn from them. And I wonder what food I have that they will eat.”

SPG, once just a poetry class, a room where fragmented minds gathered to write, now forms a collective. Each member makes sacrifices to be in class - missing the day’s only hour of sun, phone time with loved ones, their only appointment for the law library - but still they come every Tuesday. They assemble into a circle, carrying each other’s poems in their pockets.

Vincent “Vino” Britton, SPG member (who still doesn’t believe himself to be a poet), shares, “SPG has come a long way [...]. I’ve done time, 10, 12, 13 years with a lot of y’all guys. There are some guys in here that it may have been 3, 4, 5 or even 10 years that I may have walked by you and ain’t said nothing.” He now greets each member with a hug, handshake, and smile. Reflecting on this brotherhood, he says, “this group opened up that door.”

Pencils scratch furiously on paper. Each SPG poet works on pieces for the upcoming anthology, loosely themed “Self,” until the last minute when the guard arrives to escort them back to 61/2 x 11 foot cells. ID tags hang around each man’s neck. Cameras watch from ceilings. Yet this circle transcends the confinement of concrete walls. SPG is proof positive that words heal inside and stretch beyond prison walls.