Doing Time

by Bell Gale Chevigny

  Each week’s lesson comes with many examples of published work. We take turns reading these and then talk about issues related to writing — techniques, style, form, content. The hope is that the work will inspire us and that we’ll find a starting point to begin our own.

  The writing workshop has had a profound and lasting impact on each of us. Some of our writing is taken from personal experience, both in and out of prison, a lot of it comes from the pain of being incarcerated, away from family and especially children. Sometimes the writing just comes from a place never visited before. We all agree that being in the workshop has made a distinct difference in how we see ourselves. To explore this, we decided to respond to a series of questions about it.

  What brought you to the workshop initially?

  Iris: “I knew I liked to write and wanted to learn the proper techniques.”

  Lisa: “I’d come from a battered relationship. The group appeared to offer a safe place to start to figure out who and what I was.”

  Jan: “I went because I was looking for anything to do that would help me forget where 1 was. The first time I attended I didn’t feel able to write, although I wanted to. My mother had a gift for words. She could express herself very well and I wanted so much to be like her. But I wasn’t like her. In class that first night, Hettie had to lead me through the experience of visualizing a story. I imagined a tinker who drove a battered car on a dusty road. I could see the place he traveled. I could smell the sagebrush and hear the lullaby of the ocean. But I couldn’t put it on paper.”

  What was it like the first time you read aloud something you wrote?

  Lisa: “I was scared to death.”

  Jan: “I was afraid my words wouldn’t be understood.”

  Iris: “Scary. I didn’t like it.”

  What has the workshop done for you?

  Lisa: “Hettie took what I thought of as personal and private and made me see it as potentially an art form.”

  Kathy: “When I was in the women’s movement, and a whole generation of poetry was created out of the rising identity of women, I found myself writing some poetry, but I never thought that I could do it as a regular part of my life. I grew up clinging to the rational. Emotional currents had, for me, the terror of loss of control. Yet poetry always called me. It was my way of letting go and feeling those inner currents — dreaming, hoping, crying, and fearing. With the writing workshop, I had found a space that would, on a regular basis, give me permission to look at the inner self and walk in it.”

  Miriam: “I’ve learned to express myself better. If I write anything that hurts, it’s like getting it out of the way. I don’t have to worry about it again. I used to hold things in and lash out. By writing, I can actually calm myself and avoid hurting someone’s feelings.”

  Precious: “Writing about my daughter gave me an opportunity to express some feelings I had about our relationship. I work with women in here who have children in foster care. Losing children is a tremendous psychological loss. My poems gave me the opportunity to write that pain out.”

  Iris: “I feel differently about my whole life now. Instead of getting angry, I just go and write it. That’s a change for me. Through the workshop I’ve learned to let those feelings out in a productive manner. And as I write more, I’ve begun to discover another part of me.”

  Judy: “The workshop is a place in this environment where we let go of the distractions and just work. After we read what Hettie brings in, we sit quietly, preparing to write. The energy of that quietness, that collective quietness, is the moment creativity gets inspired in that room. What’s interesting, looking back at the process, is that the content of what I write about often sneaks up on me. For example, Hettie once gave us an exercise to write a short prose piece in which we focus on pacing by slowing down the action through use of minute detail. I tried to think of an expetience where time seemed to stand still, and found myself telling a story of being molested by a French tutor. I was writing about an event that I had never been able to tell anyone about. I felt a rush of energy as something that had been moldering inside me was released.”

  Have you come to think differently about your writing process?

  Jan: “I never wrote that story of the tinker. In fact, for a long time I did not go back to the workshop. But when I did, I found myself looking to learn. And I did. I’m not sure I can identify pace and rhythm and drama by pointing to an example of these in my writing. What I can do is sense that what words I have strung together have those qualities. I feel, I remember, I write. And sometimes I’m just very fortunate to end up with a piece that works.”

  Precious: “My earliest memories now are of how clinical my writing was when I started. I guess that was to be expected since I had just finished a degree in psychology. Still, I wasn’t pleased with Hettie’s constant reminders of just how dry my writing was. Wasn’t poetry a mosaic of passion, sadness, and happiness — all psychological expressions of our experience? I wanted desperately to write wonderful words about my children and my family — it’s important that we do things in here to let our families know we are okay. Then I read this line from another poet — ‘hit from time to time with lonely postcards.’ It moved me deeply and helped me to write a poem to someone from my past who was, like me, imprisoned. This one didn’t get the usual ‘too analytical’ comment from Hettie, and I was very pleased. It gave me hope, convinced me again that even if I’m incarcerated, my mind isn’t.”

  Judy: “At first, I would balk at taking any word out, as though each word represented a piece of my soul. But gradually I learned that a flood of words can muddy up the picture, that often less is more. Making a poem is like carving a sculpture out of rough rock. I get this intense pleasure out of carving away words. It feels like a spiritual experience. Once that happened, that’s when I felt, you know, I’m a poet.”

  The workshop has published two books — More In Than Out in 1992 and Aliens at the Border in 1997. There is an interesting story behind the title of one of these publications. One night, Hettie brought into the workshop a photo with a caption “Aliens at the Bordet,” and one of the women wrote a poem about it. The title seemed to be a perfect description of the group. As Miriam said at the time, “I think it is perfect because sometimes I feel as if I’m looking out from the other side of the world.” What were some of your reactions when you finally did see your work published out in the world?

  Iris: “It felt good that I had written something well enough and purposeful enough to be brought to the attention of the public.”

  Lisa: “I was proud of myself— and that was a strange feeling. It also felt encouraging, I think. It’s one thing to have Hettie say you have potential, that you’re a great writer. Then to have your work published and know that people are buying it — that’s a whole different thing.”

  Jan: “When I was young and full of dreams, I used to tell my friends in school I was going to ‘make the books.’ It was my way of saying that I would achieve some wonderful thing in my life that everyone would know about. Seeing my work, pieces of my life laid out in our book, made me feel I had fulfilled that prophecy.”

  What lasting effects has your experience in the workshop left you with?

  Lisa: “Many, but one is a real desire for writing — not just a desire, but a real joy. I consider myself a writer, a good writer.”

  Kathy: “Poetry and my work in the workshop have become a part of my life in the way some people meditate or pray. I go to poetry to help me discover the mysteries of my thoughts and feelings. It is a path into the world that is always present but whose presence we are not always aware of or do not always value. Poetry is also a craft. After struggling with emotions that I should be able to spontaneously write a poem from, I am slowly learning the patience to take a thought and work with it.”

  Iris: “I can disperse my pain through my pen.”

  Judy: “My poetry has also been a way for me to express feelings of loss and shame and hope as a mother in pr
ison, and my growing sense of remorse for the terrible losses I have caused others by my crime. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that the workshop has played a role in my reclaiming myself and my humanity.”

  For all of us the writing workshop has been a joy, a burden, but most of all a release from the cinderblock walls that surround us year after year. We assume that we will be there, to release ourselves, every Wednesday. When we presented a reading of our poetry to the prison population for the first time, everyone wondered why we hadn’t done it sooner. But first we had to learn to take ourselves seriously as writers. Not only finding our voices, but also believing that these voices mean something beyond our private world.

  1998, Bedford Hills Correctional Facility Bedford Hills, New York

  Behind the Mirror’s Face

  Paul St. John

  Charlie says to me, “We gotta get ready for that new facility mag, get us our voices heard.” He’s chewing on a nip of his cigar, which I despise, the stogie like a pen on the tripod of his hand.

  “This is prison, Chuck, not a facility. In here they don’t facilitate a friggin’ thing.”

  Charlie can’t listen and talk in the same context. “Prison writing, man, that’s where it’s at.” He’s staring at a blank screen above my shoulder.

  My brain lines up a reasonable response: How long you been down, you big stupid ape? “It makes no difference, bro,” I say instead. This is one redneck I won’t offend.

  From here on in it’s a one-way conversation, two hundred and eighty pounds of duress humming on about Jack Henry Abbott writing his way out of the joint because he had the guts to speak up, how prison writing breaks down the walls of isolation, how the pen is mightier than . . .

  The thoughts begin to soar V-formation:

  Funny that in the end the sword proved to be Abbott’s master, / With Mailer for an editor I’d write my way out of hell. /He also did a little snitching there, if the truth be told. I

  But they just dive off and fall away. I wave my hands at the curtains of smoke Charlie has installed in my cell, and he knows that’s enough of him for one morning.

  I ride the inside track, and within an hour I find out why the warden has seen fit that a few caged birds should go to print. As every con knows, democracy in the prison setting is just another word for “never,” so when each inmate group petitions to put out their own newsletters, the warden has an aberration to prevent. (Manifold printing costs, new jobs for x inmate staffs to type, edit, and lay out page after page of burning prose and slick graphics on blazing 486 computers. Forget it. They end up smarter than the guards. Then the salaried censorship squad for all whiners who will harp on and on about an evil system and skewed justice, dire living, exploitation, Bill of Rights violations and conspiracy theories ad nauseam.) So what is a reasonably sly warden to do? He will locate two or three lifers who would have been Nobel laureates if not for lack of opportunity, to offer them the chance of their lifetime. It is time his prisoners be heard!

  He will leave out one small detail: This is to be a one-time venture, something he can show the inmate groups so their nagging will rest. You will have one facility-sponsored publication, one single vehicle of choice for all your groaning pains and visions. Come and spill out your guts, dudes, in unity of song!

  There will be plenty of Dostoyevskys and Malcolms in this number, but from the groups Mr. Warden will hear a single chorus: RUB IT ON YOUR CHEST ‘CAUSE WE AIN’T RIDIN’ SHOTGUN. His calculated effort will be thus consummated, and he will smile to the portrait of Reagan on his wall. Hey, guys, I handed it to you on a mess hall tray and you declined.

  For Charlie it will be the beginning of great things. Charlie got soul. If I could synthesize the heart of his verse it would be this: the longing of looking through iron bars at the real world. Real touching stuff once you get past the trademark ache / break and dove / love rhymes. Next time around he would probably push his more radical stuff, things like “Why the Parole Board Should Be Abolished” and “Why Media Coverage of Violent Crime Should Be Abolished” and “Why the Random Cell Search Should Be Abolished.” I just hope he won’t start acting up when he discovers there isn’t going to be a second time.

  Prison Writing. The term reverberates in my brain case like kettledrums. The anger returns. I can’t recall the psycho-speak, but I know it’s like a form of Pavlov’s. People are set off by certain sights, sounds, even smells, that affect them in very special ways.

  Suddenly the gallery feels awfully quiet. I stare at my typewriter, which turns into a missile-control board. It’s time to fire away.

  I will call her Mother Nature, an artist who came into the prison to “find flowers where others saw only weeds.” I taped the Author’s Release to the wall two weeks ago. I feed a blank sheet to the machine.

  Dear Mother Narture.

  Thank you for the opportunity you have given us to videotape our work for a showing at the Cultural Center. 1 think you are a unique spirit for daring to tap into the voices of this miserably dark place. However, I regret to say that you are on the wrong track if your intentions are to use this so-called Prison Writing Experience as a means for reform, simply because prisoners, although they understand what is wrong with the system better than any criminologist, judge, cop, or outsider, have the credibility of elves. In this sense prison writing’s dead wood.

  The only other way to look at prison writing is as a way of expression. And, frankly, who wants to hear about loneliness, hopelessness, despair, loss of autonomy, harassment, contempt, or civil death, except to feel real good that things aren’t as bad out in the world? Please don’t think that I will allow myself to be used as consolation for a civilian audience.

  Finally, if you are on a true healing mission, seeking to change the minds and hearts of prisoners through a revolution of the pen, I will appreciate it very much if you’d begin with sending me some real food and vitamins to counterbalance the negative effects of the garbage I am fed. I could also use real medical care, you know, the kind that steps right to the business and doesn’t doubt the patient, and doesn’t wait for rigor mortis in order to proceed. That’s all I got to say.

  Very truly yours.

  Dr.J.

  Sorry, Charlie, I think you better take all your “I hurt” trash and your impossible solutions and rub them on your fat redneck chest. I will be a writer in prison, for now. You be all the prison writer you wish. Be a white gorilla in your cubicle bush with iron fronds and rock-hard soil. Moan your nightly if-onlys and grunt your morning sores of broken luck alone, my man, ‘cause I’ll be traveling light with the Daughters of Sin. Their silken manes fall down their rears like pouring silver, and their moans are all 1 need for a cloak. Their touch is a tingle of mercurial dew, their panting a hot leaden mist on a desert of glass. I won’t tell you about their kiss, not tonight, Charlie.

  Charlie would never understand that nothing they do here is for his benefit. The language of his philosophical cutlery will be toned down, watered down, rekneaded to retain the basic dignity of the system, or rejected if he doesn’t go along. Would any prison foster a printed attack on its own ways? Prison writing is as free as the author. Again I engage the machine and begin to spin out a little speech I Have prepared for my prison writing group, which I polish up as I go.

  On the Subject of Prison Writing

  Good evening, fellow writers. I would like to take a few minutes tonight to discuss prison writing and its place in the larger world of letters.

  As we know, writing comes in many kinds. There is fiction writing, journal writing, junk mail writing, copy writing, textbook writing, speech writing, news writing, film script writing .. . you aim, I shoot.

  Subject, genre, specialty — the writer enters it by choice. But prison writing is a matter of status. It comes with the bid and that’s that. It must take as subject matter life in prison. Prison writing is literally forced upon the writer, who, incidentally, has been stripped of just about everything else. Now, that’s
supposed to liberate.

  Hey, Charlie, you dumb ass! You big cigar-puffin’ ignorant crass sack of southern white trash! You bemused witless serf!

  A con may write fiction, but everybody will know where it comes from. His fiction wears the stink of prison for a belt. Her fiction is pregnant with loss disguised as possibility. His outlaws always get the better of a wicked status quo. Her heroines grope through a jungle of shame for their stolen womanhood, and perhaps a piece of heaven. A convict may write about Mars, the sea, rebirth, cats, needles and pins; without the “convict point of view” there is no prison writing. Take this goddamned place out of your art is what I am trying to tell you all.

  My concentration is assaulted by my boombox-proud neighbot, who jacks up the rapper cacophony until the presence of the guard, like some magical wand, directs him to turn into a punk. (Whatever happened to cool smooth good ol’ American jazz?) As soon as the guard leaves the gallery, he is King Kong again.

  King Punk is confined to his cell for talking to another inmate two steps out of character. Although he got the brunt of it, violence has no victims here. Self-defense is without justification. If you’re hurt, you shouldn’t have been there. If you do not defend yourself, you’re on a stainless-steel table with a sheet over your head, it’s that simple.

  And yet sometimes I think prison violence is all overstated, amplified, dramatized, mythicized, mostly by outsiders. Mybe I’m desensitized but prison life isn’t really as dangerous as it’s commonly portrayed. Much of the tension on the inside comes more from the perception of danger than from danger itself. That’s why the sneak attack is the preferred mode of action — the little guy sticking a pen in the big guy’s eye after the latter jokingly threatened to make him his girl. Although most cases of violence involve aggressor and prey, prison managers are unwilling to recognize assault because of the lawsuits. So they do their damnedest to make everyone look guilty or well-deserving.