WRITING FROM THE SHADOWS

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

An arctic storm is predicted to chill the entire state, bringing with it high winds, freezing temperatures, and snowfall that inevitably paralyzes our mild-weathered city. An ominous forecast for the week I have chosen to write about solitary confinement. When one of our writers disappears to the hole, we hear about it from their peers. As volunteers, we try to remain neutral, we do not speculate about the incident. Our role is to provide mentorship and support. To that end, we send in the materials we prepared for the missed sessions, along with photocopies of reading materials. We want to stay connected to our writers and reassure them even if they have lost other privileges, they still have a place at the table when they return to general population. We encourage them to continue to write and submit to the PonyXpress.

Unlike a forecasted storm that allows us time to prepare and shop for provisions, the disciplinary action comes down swiftly in prison. An incident erupts and people are segregated immediately. Disciplinary hearings come later to determine who was involved and will be further punished and who will be reinstated and released into the population. The Solitary Housing Unit (SHU or the hole) pulls people out of their routines, away from their support networks, and puts tremendous stress on an individual’s health and wellbeing. Typically, a person is isolated in a 6 by 9 cell for 23 or 24 hours a day. Prisons continue to use this “prison within a prison” punishment system, though by all measures it seems counterproductive to rehabilitation. The Oregon Justice Resource Center has published a piece about the practice.

Last summer, I hastily made a photocopy of Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese from New and Selected Poems. It was a haphazard job, so that I could read the poem to start the session, and as a result it included a bisected copy of her poem, Robert Schumann. Yep, a blank right down the middle of the text. The poet Nolan James Briden was in the SHU, so I scribbled a note on the photocopy of Mary Oliver’s assurance:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Nolan says that he needed more to read, so he constructed a poem of his own from the fragments of the facing page, to write A Page Next to Wild Geese (for Robert). When he returned to our group, we were we able to share a bit of the composer Robert Schumann’s life and his struggles with mental health and the fact that he had been institutionalized.

One of our valued members has been transferred to another prison after an incident, so our relationship will now continue through inner prison correspondence until we can run a workshop at the facility (5 hours away) where he now serves time. Chris Lewis sent us Obsidian Rivers from the hole at OSP along with his poem Harvest, a poem we published last year. This transfer hurts our writing group as Chris brought brilliant energy to our sessions. He has a connective intelligence and sensitivity to others that we all value. Before his transfer, he had started a graphic novel college class in which he was thriving. In addition to close friendships and the PonyXpress, he leaves the rose garden he tended with such pride.

Social isolation leaves shadowy marks in our brains that overtime create structural alterations to areas that regulate social interactions and emotional control.  When we read the work of our writers inside, we see the effort they are making to stay connected, to overcome the despair of loneliness, and their sheer determination to heal themselves. | TDS