Prison Writing

With a prison population approaching 2.5 million, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, imprisoning more people per capita than decidedly less-than democratic states such as China, Burma, Zimbabwe, you name it. Yet unlike these and other autocracies, in the U.S. there are no political prisoners … officially.

Event: A Working Day: Panel Discussion, PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature 2011

I’ll be the first to admit that the Brainwave: The Dreamers event sounded a bit hokey. Things didn’t start out so well at the (awesome) Rubin Museum when I ordered a gin & tonic in the stylish K2 Lounge. “Is that a drink?” my server replied. She returned ten minutes later and served me the crisp beverage … in a wine glass. Minutes later I found myself on the third floor amongst some masterpieces of art and sculpture, on what felt like a combination of a scavenger hunt and a round speed dating.   

This year, October 30 marks the centennial birth anniversary of the Spanish poet Miguel Hernández, who died in prison in 1942. Unlike Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejos, Juan Ramon Jimenez, and other writers associated with the Spanish Civil War, Hernández remains relatively obscure outside Spain, where he continues to be loved and remembered.

Prison writing is an ambiguous term, one that lends itself to the image of a tattered prisoner huddled in the corner of a dank cell in a forgotten prison in a small American town, writing on a soiled notepad and well-cordoned off from the rest of society. But this perhaps romantic notion of the writer while imprisoned quickly gave way Friday night to the harsh realities of writing as one of the last remaining links to sanity for the incarcerated in a system which practices and inflicts anything but.