Writing in Prison

I read an amazing essay by a University of Kansas English professor who teaches creative writing in the Lawrence, Kansas jail. His observations and his experiences working with inmates match my own. Dr. Brian Daldorph’s essay, “What Truly Matters,” appears in the Spring, 2010 issue of JJournal (www.jjournal.org).



He quotes from another prison teacher, Sister Helen Prejean that inmate writers write in order to:


“. . . bear witness, to stay sane, to keep their hearts pumping, to not be eaten up by rage or despair, to figure out how they got there, or to discover what truly matters. . . .”


What truly matters. Three simple words, yet put together are at the heart of what every man in my writing class explores, why they, why I, write each and every day. Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I in this situation? What will happen to me?


Each day we try to come to grasp with our mistakes, our losses, our emptiness.


As Dr. Daldorph notes,


“Inmates scrawl again and again about the misery of incarceration, the guilt, the sleepless nights . . . They relive their crimes again and again. They write about how often they feel abandoned by people on the outside, even by family and those they considered close friends. . . .”


I have read so many powerful, anguished poems and short stories by the men in my writing classes. Each day I write stories with the same themes: love lost, alienation, failure and redemption.


Until you find yourself in these circumstances, you will find it difficult to empathize with, to comprehend, the loss and loneliness, and emptiness one feels while incarcerated.


Words pour out; emotions, raw and transparent are printed out on page after page. So many men and women while locked up refuse to address it, to confront the pain they feel, to examine the whys of their existence. Yet in writing class they open up. They read you their stories about being beaten as a child when they failed to learn to tie their shoes (“Lil Man”), watching their best friend die in a shooting, they recite their poems about methamphetamine and heroin use.


I sit quietly, taking it all in, then urge a change of a word here, a semi-colon there, urging them to bring structure to their chaotic experiences as re-told on paper.


I’ve found through my own failure, my redemption. I’ve discovered “what truly matters”. In my loss, in my abandonment, I’ve discovered how important and fragile love is. I’ve found compassion and forgiveness and hope. I hate these circumstances, but I love the discoveries. I ache over what I’ve lost; I know I will never truly heal from my divorce, the loss of the woman I loved; yet, I am a better, wiser, more loving person.


While at the law library this week I met and helped a transgender inmate conduct research on his case. Prior to this I could never even comprehend the existence of a transgender person. My attitudes, my prejudices, my self-righteous opinions about so many things have been turned upside down.


Like most of the inmates who write in prison, I write to understand who I am and why. In Psalm 139, one of the most beautiful Psalms written; the writer concludes his praise for God’s omniscience and omnipresence with these words:


“Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts,
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.”


Those are words I see over and over in my student’s writings, in my own writings. They are the words of one discovering what truly matters.