ORAL TRADITION

BY TRACY SCHLAPP, BRIDGEWORKS OREGON

We have combined three writers who write from a deep well. Each has a natural cadence, a sense of how to move ideas, and they know their destination! This makes a difficult-ease to edit; it is important to offer punctuation and spacing that guides the reader. The editor’s eyes need to perform like ears. The page isn’t always a friend to the story meant to be heard.

Hugh Crow II was given permission to join the writer’s workshop the day before the deadline, and he has been an enthusiastic and valued founding member of the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution’s branch. His poem The Ceremony recognizes the gifts that are held inside, unseen amulets that offer protection and grounds to a person far from home: “…called us to touch our intimate worth / For the joining of hearts forever beat / To ceremonies of thee, Indigenous drum…” Hugh will be the first on his feet to read to the group, it seems testifying is as important as the words to this writer.

In Nolan James Briden’s incantation the ancestors mix together to speak to him, offering encouragement and recognizing his confinement — there is no question that all his bloodline was tempered by will and war. This country’s destructive history based in exploitation and elimination of humans has drawn distinct lines to mass incarceration. His poem Up-Side Down Foot_Prints pulls no punches. It is a recounting of solitary confinement and the helpless-hopeless space of undetermined fate: “Spiraling mines where my mind lays wait/   Waiting for the hurry up…………………………………………………………. /  And wait date/  of times-futures—unknowns” Nolan spoke the poem in one of our recent workshops and it resounded through the space. We are working on permissions from the Department of Corrections to add recordings of our writers to the ponyXpress. You will soon be able to hear for yourself!

With a voice that tumbles line to line with ease, Wallace Moreland is meant to hold court on a hot stoop or perhaps a porch in New Orleans rather than Eastern Oregon Correctional Institute in Pendleton. Wallace is a long way from his lifeline of gumbo, and Mardi Gras revelry, and the hustlers who taught him how to spin a story. My Ancestry winds through the neighborhoods of the family who made a life on their talents and tenacity. Of his Great, Great, Great Grandpa he writes with pride and affection: “He also was a fallen man. Redeemed. He was resourceful, an opportunist, and a survivor.” We are reminded what it takes to bring our generations forward — survival and spirit. | TDS