I am not, strictly speaking, a poet—although I do dabble. But I am a volunteer, from way back: at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, as a Monterey County Sheriff's Office Search & Rescue team member, as a Ventana Wilderness Alliance/National Forest Service wilderness ranger—to mention my longest stints, each over ten years.
Right now, though, I feel like easing my way out of rangering (it's become rather janitorial); but I'd still like to give. The other day in a newsletter from poet Ellen Bass, I learned about the SCPP, which she helped to launch while she was Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County. Maybe, I thought, something less physical, more aesthetic?
But also, very much, social: the Santa Cruz Poetry Project works with incarcerees, people in various jail facilities in the county awaiting trial and sentencing. Participation in weekly poetry classes, if they qualify, can help them whittle down their sentences. It also, as many former participants attest, enriches their lives.
Poetry and literature and arts classes in jails and prisons nationwide are huge. I can't begin to research all of them, but one benefactor right here in California is the William James Prisons Art Project, which supports SCPP. Or there's this account, by Nik De Dominic, of fifteen years teaching poetry inside California prisons. I expect if I were to start googling, I'd find similar programs in every state. (I hope so, anyway.)
In any case, I've now started the process: I need to get fingerprinted, then I'll meet the program director and get a tour of the county's jails, and observe some classes. Then: I'll teach.
What poems should I start with?
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