Joe and Nancy Paddock presents South Dakota Penitentiary inmates who write poetry. The prison program is called Poets at the Pen.

Includes interview with Craig Volk, a young poet employed by the South Dakota State Arts Council to be director of group; numerous inmates reading their work; and music elements.

This is part of Joe and Nancy Paddock’s Poets-in-Residence Series.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) Yeah, I need. Joe and Nancy Panic they're coming in to do a thing folks saw put arts class. In the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota a group of inmates meet several times each month to read discuss and write poetry. The director of this group is Craig Volk a young poet employed by the South Dakota State Arts Council his students men of all ages though. Mostly young are people who in the main would probably never have written a poem had their lives not LED them to prison. But they obviously have some strong things to write about and they are men of talent and strong feelings on a rainy day back last September Joe and Nancy Paddock spent several hours listening to and talking with this group about poetry especially their own work and how it relates to their lives. Taking two steps forward one step backward on down to see white spaces. Should I talk first or what? Prison nights a heartbeat sounds like Thunder Wind Tunnel breath of raw. Shut up ice cream its silence. Since reward 10 by 6 my Abode for five paint with sweat and blood myself the dirt and the corner knows me as friends. We live silently. My little boy said you're stuck dead. Strip search unadorned an unprotected spread him Squat and lift. Thank God that I'm a number. Hope son blasting - routine one day less. Five years hard labor by the blooming gavel. I feel burning stinging rose thorns. And watch the red petals fluttered to the ground. prison doors Okay, let's lock it up. Sliding doors go shut slam. I've closed myself in damn.
(00:02:43) But the still not satisfied out in the cold. When they let me out of prison I held my head up. I determined I would rise above the shame.
(00:03:13) Well, I guess the official name would be poets at the pin. The program is through the South Dakota Arts Council was co-sponsored by the state penitentiary. I began really about three years ago here doing a what was a weekly Workshop where the people signed up for it and took it almost like a recreational program then last year. I began my work here at Coolidge High School. There is a school system within the walls which grants mean geds or High School diplomas depending on what they are after in terms of their own educational self-betterment or degree, whatever they want. So what's happening now is that I work with essentially two structured classes where people can take the classes for credit in high school credit they want and some of them just take it because they want to be better creative writers or reached a level where they can get more credit but are still interested in the class and an exploring the written word. at the 7-Eleven here's all the ingredients that you need. You're going to have two characters. I want them to be well-drawn character using simile metaphor if you like, you know, you're right. There's you like the road map of, Georgia. Describing his wrinkles and then he just buy the highway as the sun duck in behind the clouds the weather worn face of the old man looked to the highway from the top of his open red tractor. A load of Wonder Bread when rolling by sucking the dust and dirt up in the air only to add to the hard looking face as the drifted down around him the mud flaps waved. Goodbye as the driver wondered what the special would be a Joe and Mary's Diner. The farmer did not mind dust and dirt as much as he did the sun wrinkling his tired face.
(00:05:37) Things I learned in a hobo jungle. We're things they never taught me in a classroom and Cruz Chicago in the afternoon. Hey, I'm not bragging or complaining. I'm just talking to myself man command this old. And she didn't take a lot of doing that take a lot of pride in what I am. Never traveled in a hurry the got nobody waiting for me anywhere Omens anywhere. I'm living if it's sleeping on some vacant Mansion City Square if I'm working on some road game. We're just living off
(00:06:40) it varies from day to day and from group to group. I would say that normally I can A fairly good response. There's it's difficult in the sense that here are some people who essentially are all have one common denominator a couple of common denominators of course their inmates, but the second thing is that they're all dropouts. All of them are going back to school. Some of them are 50 60 years old and some of them are 17 18 years old. So the way they look at the marginal or real value that poetry or any creative expression can have in their in their life is often times very Wanted and they oftentimes have a dim view of of any real tangible results from that but I would say on the general. My general experience has been that people who join the class either they get paroled or they're out of the school or else they continue until they've gotten the credit and so on that that's been heartening that the people do realize that tangible worth of it at least in terms of experience. If nothing else that there is some enjoyment going I have to compliment particularly the warden in the other staff people at her and saw him as a Ward and Dean hinders who I've worked with terms of him being program director, since I started here. They've been very encouraging they've given they supported the workshops. We've had incidents where special recognition has been given to certain writers. I think in terms of their on particular sentencing because they've shown a dramatic Improvement and have have have established themselves as writers as almost a vocation. I would say those are few and far between I will underline of course, but as regards censorship, no, I we've submitted poems and articles to various magazines and they've been readily accepted and I in turn have given those two the warden into the other people to make sure they have These administrative people and I've had no negative feedback whatsoever. I need.
(00:08:56) I'm strongly one
(00:08:57) that believes there's a hell of a difference between having someone memorize the village Smithy and or having some or someone coming into any type of institution and reading poetry to the people and having them kind of sit there and and respond and that's all there is to it. I work very hard at getting the people's work in print getting them to enter contests getting them to read work by other writers and to have a more full body experience because when the work gets on the work eventually lands in that printed page is when a greater recognition of the least potential of becoming a writer. Starts to take it more solid form starts to take hold of the psyche.
(00:09:55) I
(00:09:55) don't see myself as being a therapist. I've seen some startling things as regards people self-image a fostering of a much better self-image and their ability to retrace and to relocate themselves in terms of experiences that they've had people that they've met and where they began to go. Astray. I don't say that it holds I Don't people that I believe in the most that I've worked with the most I still don't give them better than a 50-50 chance on the outside. I'm not an idealist in that sense. I do however feel that if the gift is there and it's never realized it's never in any way pursued then something has been lost and there have been up some cases where I feel that without the cat me being the Catalyst that gift would have never even been recognized as much less become manifest in any way that to me is heartening. I don't see myself as I say as being kind of a clinical therapist who has a set goals that you are going to that. We are going to try to tap their bad family and we're going to tap where they started to get along with alcohol and drugs and we're going to write a drug poem today and tomorrow. We're going to write a broken family poem and the next day. We're going to write a I'm so damn mad about having to stay Behind These Bars. Night in and night out that kind of thing. No, I don't do that. I remember Nebraska poet rilke left corn saying something to the effect that he gotten into poetry in his mid-30s. So it has something to do with his wasted Youth and it strikes me that that maybe in some ways looking at this experience that you've talked about that is possibly the burden of the inmates here that it is a thing they can do with it right when that happens. I mean, that's that's that's when the true Joy of working this kind of a situation arises. When all of a sudden there's a spark in the kindling takes and and in all of a sudden all of these things all of these characters that that infest or complement their past become living people again through through the poem. This is the great time of the with these people. I mean, there's no I think human situation where people don't take stock of their perspective. then here
(00:12:42) There's always one more City. I'm on the run. The highway is my home. I raised a lot of Cain back in my younger days while Mama Used To Pray My props with
(00:13:07) baby. It's called going. walking through snow crystalline and soft brushing smoothie over Warren and cold dry Boots the air feels like ice on my teeth and a cold heavy steel ball in my tightening aching chest the sun remains but only as a lighter Circle High on the dropping great clouds shining far off the beam of gold on a bleak Frozen Ridge tree stand pitifully gnarled and exposed crying black Twisted skeletons against the lonely forsaken sky, Ancient finger bone is reaching hurting. quiet so thick it's like a massive weight on my bare existence pressing pressing all depressing the hungry stomach and Lonesome heart going the world is asleep and shivering curled up and empty boxcar around the
(00:14:03) North I'm on the run. The highway is my home
(00:14:24) but two years. I didn't write and right when I was out there so no need for it. What I Hear It kind of passes away time, you know I think there's other reason or reasons to mostly the pathway time. Do you think when you get out? I don't know how soon you hope to get out, but when you get out that you beginning writing again at that time, right? Do you think the writing will change when you leave here? I think so, you know, it's changing now and I'm trying to write certain way. I can't you know, but And there's a lot of other things. I like to write upon, you know. It will change what sort of things have you written. Mostly about in the last two years mostly reservation life and One or two prison forms at times on nights like this lighting a cigarette sitting up Stark naked never had any use for PJ's out there. Anyway, damn can't sleep tonight again. I repeat to myself youth Never Dies. I saw old. Raggedy Winos. I standing in circles behind beer joints acting young. I wonder what they talk about. Maybe I can be like them. The silent Garden made us 3 3 a.m. Round stopping by my cell door and Whispering anything wrong, and I've been polite Whisper back go do your job and let me do my time. He leaves a sneaky as he came. Damn. I wonder why I can't sleep tonight again. I assume that you might be going for at least spending some time on the reservation when you leave here. We'll do you think that you're writing about the reservation will have you go back and see it with different eyes now since you've written about it. Well, I have no place else to go. You know, that's where I was born and as from going back to him. And probably a lot of things that will change. You know, I've been in here two years. a lot of things to write about I mentioned something about there is a certain amount of humor that goes on in this classroom settings to yes. Yeah there certainly is they get a little raucous sometimes and we every now and then do an extra time exercise that is essentially based on silliness and frivolity and not too far removed from dog girl, but maybe to illustrate that I should read this poem. It's a poem that Tony long with wrote and he brought the class one day and it's just one of those off Sort of zany frolics at the mine goes off on some time and he down into a poem. It's called come and shake hands with stupid. The sun was going down on the horizon to the end to end the day but this lunatic was just getting out of bed to start his day. He rolled out of bed yawn stretch stood up and did a few fast knee bends and asked cheerfully to nobody. What's for breakfast. The craziest part was all this was going on in the middle of a wheat field God Jay, Kansas stupid. I was traveling down a gravel road on the back being load. The sun was a mirror all bright and shiny and so was I with my fresh cut heinie the next thing I knew I was lying on the couch with my newly formed. Ouch. My toes smiled up at me with a Sinister Grin While the pain kept throbbing all the while. And then came the day when I said hey pain go away. What do you think? It would listen know the pain was here to stay you do you find? That that the prison setting is a good place for working writer. You want to sit down and write is a good place to be or bad Blaze. How do you see it? It's it's a setting for kind of a bizarre writing I think. It's you get more into your own head and you get more ideas because you've got an empty space in your head where you haven't got your problems. You got your worries and you can just sit down and and bizarre thoughts is kind of come to your pretty easy. It's kind of a release for mental anguish. When you when you get a thought, you know, it's kind of hard not to think of the complete thought and it's kind of hard to write it down without changing the complete thought from what it was. But at the same time there's a sometimes there's a need to just sit down and write something. Said that just comes to you. It's kind of a relief when you do write it down. What kind of themes generally do you find most of the people around you are writing about mostly prison life itself how to handle time how to do time without let it get into you first. Just basically handling time do some of you when you when you when you come into a writing Workshop like this have some hope maybe of not just writing for your own satisfaction, but maybe that you publish some things may be in fact make a vocation out of your writing. Oh, yeah. I think there's a few of us. There's a lot. I've got it work on yet. But like I say I got plenty of time plenty of time to work on it. I have to feel most definitely that each of these people by the very nature of their being here have a wealth of experience that most of us have never had. I don't know if you call it a wealth. Sometimes it's a burden of experience and There if you can tap that source that natural resource of all of that incredible energy that has gone on with their relationships and their experiences and get them somehow to funnel those onto the page. Then it begins to work. There's a lot of going I go through basic mechanics and bring in examples in and try to use prison work to show them that there's there's a voice out there that they're not Before I've always been one to applaud William Carlos Williams who once said it because they have no language. They must perish and it seems that that is has always been that I mean the ability not to express themselves. I think obviously has expressed itself in other ways and hence their predicament now being put into prison for for their various forms of expression that were antisocial or on the wrong side of the law. I suppose some of the common themes of course are within the poems frustration, of course and longing the deep ache of longing of getting out getting beyond the bars of course arises all the time. I would say beyond that. a common theme might be anger towards the judicial system towards guards towards of the prison Administration that at times will Air and again, a lot of that goes back to that to the aspect of of frustration in the mere fact of being incarcerated some of them for long periods of time and then their continual reoccurring frustration of going up for cut boards and parole boards and getting editor not getting it and And never quite knowing where they stand in terms of as they could say, I'm hitting hitting the streets. Again. That's one of the lines that they always use. When is it time for me to hit the streets? Much loneliness in terms of family girlfriends and that sort of thing expressed in their writing. Yes, most most definitely that that airs itself woman in the clouds with long beautiful hair features of gold and silver lining eyes of black pearl Her Arms Reach Around the World her legs reach to other planets to steady us. She is the mother of all things she cradles Humanity in her bosom. she still loves us for what we were that Pullman here and I woman and in the cloud was mainly because of a picture of an Indian woman in the clouds and my ex ex-wife and kind of got it took me a while to do that. But I did it because I kept on remembering her and how I heard her and I'm pretty I'm real. Sorry about it. And That's Amore. That's the reason I wrote that poem. Did it help you to write the poem to your field. Yeah, it helped when every time I thought about her I try to make up a different poem in several different ways, but did when I Saw that picture that got me into going on just that woman and made me feel pretty good afterwards when I got busted for what I got busted for she kept on coming up see me and I give her a copy of it. I hope you understand that before I got into poetry while when I come up here was really the first time I started writing poetry but I did start in. So when I was 16, I started writing short stories. All you could say all bad was our things and that's when I got up here. I started Craig. Give me a lotta. And I meant a big hand in it. He got me a going. Is it generally easier to work from the starting situation of the sort that Craig might set up in a classroom or find her own starter? Well, I find it easier for me to write in my cell include in the classroom. I don't have a train of thought that I have when I'm in myself. I can write a little bit but it don't make sense and then I go to my cell and I finish her up or try to I'm So Lonesome. I Could Cry I've never seen a night so long when
(00:26:10) time goes across
(00:26:13) all and by just went behind the clouds. How long have you been writing Tom? I don't know about 10 years, I guess. I assume that you started writing before you came to the penitentiary that yeah was that in college or just on your own or on my own? I use it as a way of, you know escaping for a while sit down to put words on paper. If you let there any limitations on your writing in that you're an inmate in the prison. Does that inhibit the way you would write or the sort of things you can write you feel? No, you can write about anything you want. Although I think your moods, you know, you don't normally write about to happy things, you know that much to be happy about in a prison, especially this time do you expect to continue writing and perhaps trying to publish some things when you once you leave I intend to continue writing without a never think of anything published. I'm not that good. I think the pretty good poems myself and probably could get something published The General Ribbons in glass clouded the old Soldiers Home. Okey Guadalcanal sold pusan way case on Quang Tri the old man cries and Blood Sweat dream Captain mountainy men, then once again to Glory he rides on the death of Brave young men. I like the general when I first thought it was sitting in class and we're kind of reminiscing and I worked in geriatrics. I was a senior Medic in the service. We had a lot of old retired soldiers and they always had Ribbons to live by their dead soldiers. They told you that the ones that died, he was Brave he was Brave, but he wasn't he was dead. You know, I was alive I was happy so way. I looked at it. Did you ever have any feeling when you started writing maybe hear poetry and man that sissy stuff and people kind of laugh at you for writing it or anything like that or has there ever been a problem of that sort. Do you feel No, I was kind of Lucky when I first started writing. I was in Vietnam and the guys that couldn't write hardly anything would come to you pay you so much, you know to write to their girlfriends and write love letters and stuff. So you would jot it down and make a few bucks. You know, she didn't know it was coming from so I've never heard of make money off it, you know, anything worth doing is worth doing for a profit. Do you tend to write any pros at all? Yeah. I'm working on a short story, but it's a long time coming
(00:28:53) on a freight train. I'm leaving town not knowing where I'm bound and the one changed my mind but Mama Tried one it only Rebel child from a family Meek and Mild my mama seem to know what lay in store despite all my son did learning towards the bad. I kept on turning till Mama couldn't hold me anymore. Not turn 21. Imprisoned without no one could steer me, right? But Mama Tried Mama Tried
(00:29:35) Building dust Between the Bars constant male going in and out in the scrapes and Paths of pile days. How long have you been writing class? Long time ago, I wrote a probably a few poems and then I didn't write any for probably seven years and I wrote someone I first came in here I asked. Another fell earlier whether or not ran into some people thought that writing poetry was kind of a sissy thing to do or something like that. You you have any problems There It Is by The you tell Yeah, I write I write a lot of poems. I don't show anybody. I sent them to my wife she reads and my color don't show them to anybody, you know, but I mean that that they're just not the kind of poems that I'd want anybody to read, you know, when they look at it and go. Wow. It's getting really weird, you know, and but the ones I read in class and for classic. Some of them like, you know, when I read them they're kind of I don't know I get embarrassed about him, I guess because you know, just what's thought of the other people, you know, it's something that's my thought my feelings and kind of shaky just you know have other people can't cut you down. Where do you get your ideas? I know feelings feelings. Most of what I write about is his past things that have happened in things. I really like to do. and ideas come from From from feelings that did you have that that you can express any other way than to you can't write them in a letter. You can't write them in a book. You just they just seem to you have to Corner him with an object or something, you know something really simple and plain. I'll explain what you're trying to see you mention how sometimes when you wrote something about your own inner feelings and you're a little shaky. About sharing them with the rest of the group. Do you feel that once you've done it? It's a good thing to have done. I didn't know. Kind of leaves you open, you know people go. Well. Yeah, he thinks this and he thinks that but not really I think a lot more things and just just what I write. So it doesn't give him the full picture. They're only seen a piece of it.
(00:32:39) The cell doors have closed the grid of iron bars
(00:32:43) slowly rolls on its rail counting each security
(00:32:46) click until it announces with a loud clang
(00:32:49) that the cell doors are closed Bruce. do you find that that as a as a writer that there are any limitations anything that you that because you are in prison, you won't write about it or feel you should or can write about well, there's a lot of things that are happening on the outside world that you can't know about to write about you have two more or less experienced them to figure out what to write about them. Do you think you continue to write once you get out on the street possibly? I don't know how far I'll get into it. I started it as a hobby sort of and when I got involved with Craig's class. It just you know, I just stuck with it. Do you feel it? Most of the riders that are people in the classes? Come are they is it is it a way of helping to do time or they are they really interested in the writing or a little bit of both? I suppose it would be a lot to do with a way to pass the time and way to get you know things out of your system you can write and Let yourself explore ideas in your mind get them out kind of calm your feelings down way to relieve frustration some time. Some people write about what caused them to get busted some of them. Right about General things some right about what they experienced inside the penitentiary my scars. My scars are the hieroglyphics of my life said deeply into the tomb of my body telling the torn history of my youth
(00:34:32) serum waste it on the sidewalk. It is jacket and his jeans wearing yesterday's misfortunes like a smile once You had a future full of money and ringing would you spend like they was going out of style and he keeps right on a change for the better or the worse searching for a shrine. He's never found never know when it believing. It's a blessing or a curse River going up. With worth the coming down. He's a boy and he's a picker. He's a prophet. He's a pusher. He's the pilgrim and a preacher and problem when you start he's a walking contradiction partly truth and pain to take a nail wrong direction on his lonely way back home.
(00:35:44) There's a whole concept that goes on here that the notion is called hard time and hard time and I think any person pulls hard time. But it's really a prison expression that meaning that when time itself become so oppressive when it when you reach the breaking points when you have that Riptide of anxiety that seems to be pulling you into deeper water and you just can't tread water any longer that happens here and some of my people pull heart time and it's something that I have to look out for I've even myself at certain times. Someone will say well I'm having some trouble with the workshop or I'm spending more time. Kind of looking away than looking at them. And those are you pulling hard time VOC and I say yeah, maybe I am and it seems that most of the time though there aren't too many people who don't get pulled out of that heavy weight of depression to me. It's been in a very intriguing social experience as regards the the community of what you know, some people say, I'm not an inmate I'm a convict, you know, I'm not a mate with these people. Whereas some of the relationships that have developed these kind of symbiotic relationships between people has also been rewarding. I think a sense of a sense of a peer group with the writers as happened at times and and that's something that's very desirable I think because then it becomes it's not that voice in the wilderness, but there's there's some sort of a pact to run with I think I've gotten a much better use the word before I use it on myself perspective of my own life and work. I've gotten gained a great deal as a writer. In amassing in collecting materials that I can use and we often times I often tell him I said if you don't write that poem I'm going to write it. So the next day I'll show up with the poem and read it to them and they'll laugh and not about it and say hell we could have written that so it's kind of a challenge sort of situation develops. And also of course it's that breaking down of the teacher-student barrier where they become they develop a community within themselves when I'm also a part of that community and it becomes bigger than than any teaching situation becomes a kind of a bond of friends or a cluster of friends who are who are working to To gain each other's respect to impress to amuse to in some way reveal a greater part of what they truly are then then what they see on a day by day basis surviving in the prison situation. And I too and part of that you've been listening to the thoughts and poetry of men involved in poets at the pain a class sponsored by the South Dakota State Arts Council Craig VOC directs this project at the South Dakota State penitentiary in Sioux Falls. The poet's were Tony Long Wolf Tim quilt. Tom Healy Clarence Jacobs Mark clincal Bruce Lippert, David. Cracky, Ron Gall Walt Prue and Don lowther. The program was produced by Joe and Nancy. Haddock poet in Residence at Minnesota Public Radio Station care SW. We heard Merle Haggard singing branded man. I take a lot of pride in what I am. I'm a lonesome fugitive and Mama Tried Hank Williams saying, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry the guitar bridge was by Norman Blake and Kris Kristofferson finished with the pilgrim produced in the Worthington Studios of care SW with assistance from Vicki sturgeon. This program was made possible in part with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts
(00:39:56) From the rocking of the crater to he's a he's a pilgrim and preacher and problem when he starts walking contradiction partly truth and part fiction. Wrong direction on his lonely way back home a lot of wrong direction.