Just published is a huge undertaking by Leigh Sugar, MFA, MPA, who spent years gathering and focussing material; then finding a publisher for an anthology she edited of writings by facilitators of prison art programs across the country. “That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It” is now out and available with such acclaim as this:
“That’s a Pretty Thing shows us that it is possible to seek beauty from hell; that it is possible to cultivate sweetness and honesty in the face of brutality and betrayal. We learn that buried deep in the American carceral system are people. People who love and hurt and think and grow. People who have something to say if only we would listen.” —Cynthia W. Roseberry, Acting Director, ACLU Justice Division
“…Here, in knife-edged detail, is prison’s mundane hell: the “ceremonies” of entry and exit, the arbitrary rules, the pointless cruelties. Here, too, are careful portraits of incarcerated students and writers, who challenge their would-be teachers and write with an urgency that most of us will never possess.” —Marshall Thomas, attorney, public defender, writer
“…the prose and poetry warriors in That’s a Pretty Thing to Call It go where the dead white poets feared to tread – beyond the silk veil that separates the living from the civilly dead.” —Michael Rhynes, author of Guerrillas in the Mist
My poem, ‘Passages,’ appears below and on pages 165-7 in the book. It was written in response to the Touch Drawing image, above, during a session of WritingInsideVT many years back:
… floating in a frigid blue stream
arms clutched to her body
for warmth
the warmth that would cover her
if only the gold were sun, not
last seasons’ leaves
leaving her to float along
like time, neither pausing not returning
but moving
moving as she cannot, lodged
as she is under a rock ledge wedging her
tightly
tight as the birth canal she once knew
though forgot, how she needed to push out
to the light
like the light spreading before her now,
fanning from swollen breasts outward, an invitation
of color
blazing color of autumn’s amber - that pine resin frozen in time -
but not she, here, now - no, a life force
pulls at her
pulls her from that tight passage
between then and now, the passage
that transforms
transforms as water shapes rock, as leaves ripen and fall,
as life cycles through the body
of earth
earth-bound, air-borne, water-channeled --
light and dark, birth and death - all cycling through
the tight spaces
spaces we construct from what we think
or think we know, believe - and yet, true space
is wide open, floating …
swb
sarahscapes 