We asked poet Kyes Steven of Auburn University's Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project to record a workshop for us. Take a listen. 

Prison Poetry Workshop has asked poets from across the country to record a special workshop for our listeners.  Feel free to play this series for incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated youth and adults and ask them to write their own poetry in response and send them to us.  Responses may be posted on the Prison Poetry Workshop website and shared with our listening audience.  This is amazing drop-in content for programs that have prison audiences.  

Writer and Latino activist Luis J. Rodriguez was born in El Paso and grew up in East L.A.  We went to talk Luis Rodriguez simply because he, and his writing, was referenced by so many of the incarcerated writers we met and interviewed along the way to making Prison Poetry Workshop.  The youth in D.C. central had thumbed copies of his best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and his name came up at facilities across the country. 

You can learn more about Rodriguez writing at his website and you should certainly visit the Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar, CA.

Sit in any prison classroom or recreation room and ask: How many writers are in the room? How many people are writing rhymes or poems? Carefully-folded pieces of paper come out of pockets – words written in tightly stylized hand-writing. As we listen to these poems we realize they hold a deep significance to our understanding of American culture and its tradition of democratic arts.

The Prison Poetry Workshop traveled to Alabama and met the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project, a part of Auburn University, which serves prisons across the state. APAEP believes it's important for the adult prison population to gain an education and access to the arts. Join us as we listen in on their writing workshop.