When did you first start writing,
and if it was when you were incarcerated,
what kinds of things did you first like to write about?
Well I started-- I didn't start writing
until I was incarcerated.
I was-- I fancied myself writing fiction, actually.
So I started writing these stories
and somewhere along the time-- on some of-- somewhere
along the way, my protagonist was a little girl
that was from Clifton Terrace, which
is these projects in Washington DC.
And she recited poetry, and I didn't
know what a poem really was.
So so I had to figure that out.
And so my first attempts were these feeble poems,
but then one day I was in the day room,
and there was an article in The Washington Post, that
highlighted this is poet from DC named E. Ethelbert Miller, who
was actually at Howard and I never
knew him while I was there.
But that was, of course, it was not
something that was on my radar.
And so I actually wrote him, and it
started a lifelong friendship, but also a correspondence
in sort of guiding me into the things
I should be reading and thinking about.
And so by the time my sentence was commuted,
my sentence was commuted in 2000 and I
was sent to a program in North Carolina for two years,
and I began to sort of really, really write.
And I would go to these open mics
and sort of read my poetry.
So it kind of started there, but while I was there,
I would just sort of write essays, part of a group,
sort of a group therapy stuff.
And before I went-- before I went to--
I was sent to state prison.
One of the counselors called me in her office.
Matter of fact, I called you.
I called my dad, my family that day.
You don't know this but she let me use the telephone.
And then when-- and before I left,
she told me to make a promise that I would keep writing.
She said there's something there,
and I really think that you have a chance to say something.
And so that really stuck with me and so I kept that little one
piece of hope when I went to the state prison,
so I wrote every day, and just like a feeling--
I would feel my battle with this stuff.
And that was it, you know what I mean?
So there was a couple of books along with it I read.
One of them was really intimate that my mom
sent me was Convicted in the Womb
by Carl Upchurch, who's passed away now.
But it was one of those first books from someone
who had been on the inside and who had changed his life,
and went on to get a master's degree
and started the first gang summit in Kansas City,
I think, in the 80s, in the late 80s.
So it made an impact on me and I'm glad, so that's good.
So to me, that was really important, that one little step
saying, hey, you can do this.
Any more questions?
Do you think writing helps society acclimate more to you?
Or do you think your writing helped you acclimate back
into society?
I think the latter in what you said.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know.
I mean, All I can know about it, I think it helped me adjust,
and it helped me deal with coming
back and sort of trying to be acclimated and reintegrate.
Because I had a lot of questions.
I don't know if I was necessarily angry, but probably
angry at myself for putting myself in that situation.
But also, it helped me not to feel sorry for myself.
And it helped me not to think that I
was so different from everyone else
that I couldn't do the things that I needed
to do to make a positive impact, and be successful in whatever
I chose to do.
And it's something about writing.
I had tried so many things.
Like, I've been many things in my life.
And so I wasn't a one-off.
You know what I mean by that, right?
Like, I didn't do one thing.
I go, oh, I went to jail.
I'm just so sorry.
I made my life a lifelong commitment.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm serious.
It's a lifelong commitment to doing.
I'm doing stuff.
And so writing was the only thing that made me feel whole,
and it was the only thing that I felt--
yeah, it was the only thing.
And how how was I going to make it?
How was it going to support myself?
How was I going to make it?
I had no clue.
None.
But I just knew it made me feel good inside, and made me happy.
It made me feel like I was doing something.
So I decided, let me do that versus going out
here, and hustling, and selling, like one of the old, South
American, Bahamas and trying to play Miami Vice and all
of those things.
I'm just kind of being serious, like it's not me.
Let me try that.
I could remember when I was-- remember
when I was going to Chicago.
I was going to get my MFA, they were like, what
were you going to do with that?
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know.
We're going to figure it out.
But I just knew that, let me try something
that makes me feel good and makes
me feel like I'm making an impact some kind of way.
How about that?
And so, getting back to your original point,
that's what writing did for me.
It gave me that confidence to step outside and just take
that leap.
Because I always had the words.
I don't know if I can change everyone's mind, right?
But I could write about it.
I could talk about it, and I can put it out there
in the universe and at some point
maybe someone would come to it in their own space
and their own time.
But right-- but I'm fighting for my life too.
And I still am.
I just want to thank you for being here tonight.
I taught for six years in a maximum security prison
for men in upstate New York.
I taught poetry.
Which one?
Green Haven.
I stood at Mount McGregor.
Yeah I taught at the same time that Quincy Troupe, and Janine
Pommy Vega were teaching in prisons,
so we had a big reading, where we read our students' work.
And it was so important for my education to do this,
going in there every week for six years.
But I just want to thank you for being here.
Oh thanks so much.
Thanks for saying that.
[APPLAUSE]
I imagine you hear sometimes from inmates
and I'm wondering if when that happens,
does it lead to correspondence?
Do you have that kind of time?
Or are your books in the prisons, is what I meant.
Well yeah, they are.
I send-- Where I go, I get a lot of mail, a lot of mail.
And I write back with them as much as I can.
I don't write--
I used to try to write everybody back,
but I can't say I do that.
But I do have some that I write more than others.
And I've sort of been--
just getting back to your point, Mount McGregor.
There was a workshop up there started
by this young Mormon named Cara Benson,
and she invited me when I was in Albany to come work.
We did a reading together in Albany
at the A, or something like that.
Forget what it is.
And that group of guys, so I used
to go there like maybe once a month.
They used to have a speak out.
So it was a poetry reading, so they
invited me to come to their poetry reading.
And I read, and I was really impressed,
and so I would come to their workshops.
And I did that for a little while
and I became really invested in probably about six
or seven guys that was in that group.
And most of them have gotten out now, I remained close with them
and they've all-- most of them have gotten out.
And what's so interesting about their group,
it was a poetry group that sort of liked
to be an MFA program, or getting something to go back,
because they were serious.
They were really serious writers, and they still are.
But they all went and left, and became
these interesting leaders in different ways.
And it's just amazing to sort of see that progress.
So they-- that group of guys has been sort of my inspiration,
but from time to time I go other places.
I do get letters and stuff, so I do write back when I can.
But when you said that, that just brought that back.
That people like, what does poetry do?
Especially when you're inside?
Well it gave them a sort of confidence
and a sort of hope to go out.
And they-- I mean, they got master's degrees.
They finished some Ph.D programs,
some of them running businesses, and it's just interesting.
And all of them have gotten out and done well.
So it's something about that little bump,
and I don't know what it is, man, but they've all done well.