OPENING CEREMONY

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

We set the table.

When we arrive at Oregon State Penitentiary on Wednesdays, someone has made sure that the tables circle our room. I imagine the center area creates space for differing ideas to collide, where they might intersect and grow — like the white space on the page or the freedom in an otherwise constrained place. In the room, there is a whiteboard at hand, and PonyXpress editor Matt Reyes positions Lakota Club’s percolator in the back right-hand corner so that folks can come into our workshop and fill their cups with piping hot coffee without interrupting the conversation.

I unpack my tote and build a little alter of worksheets and books, writing to return, and submission forms. This ritual helps me organize my head for the cacophony to come during the next two hours. Our core writers have differing views about the official start time. I like to play it by ear, the informal conversation and the quick hellos from folks outside of our group often generates new projects for Bridgeworks or invitations to events … these off-line sessions provide us with informal catch up with people on the activity floor, a prison version of water cooler talk. As people arrive, I move around the room, making physical contact with each member of our group. Trust is built over time, eye contact, positive energy exchanged, handshakes, hugs. All the while I am taking the temperature of the room.

One of us will ring the Tibetan Singing Bowl, which quiets the boisterous crowd and draws our attention inside. The tone is our reminder to let go of all that happened before we entered the room. With an exhale, we bring our intention to the center space. I listen closely to hear the last drop of vibration before I stand and read a poem.

Issue No. 6 will address the question: “How Do We Make Ceremony?” Our writers will pull on the threads that distinguish ceremony, ritual, tradition, and how they are adapted in prison. The writers will consider the way ceremony holds culture and holds one’s identity. The PonyXpress writers have gotten a head start, so we have a thick manuscript of work ready to release, starting next week. We open Issue No. 6 with an incantation: Nolan James Briden’s Lines In A Symphony, a poem he wrote for our anthology Prisons Have A Long Memory: Life Inside Oregon’s Oldest Prison.

Since January, we have set the table with passages and poems from the following stack of books. Issue No. 6 will include responses generated from the soundtrack of these artists, writers, musicians. The books share an electric, feral quality as they mine the nooks and crannies of a creative life.

Devotions by Mary Oliver
A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past by Lewis Hyde
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir by Nico Case
Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch
Thunder Songs: Essays by Sacha taqwseblu LaPointe

We made the opening ceremony for our PonyXpress workshops to clear prison out of our work space. The singing bowl marks the beginning and the end of a session. We ring the bowl when someone is meeting with the parole board or when someone has passed away. Wednesday, we had a joyful ringing of the bowl, as J. Hunter popped into our workshop to bid us farewell. He releases next week. We have more poems by Hunter to publish this year — and happily we will add free citizen to his biography. | TDS