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Free Verse Writing Project
Link to MTPR Interview:
Link to Montana Kaimin Article:
Free Verse amplifies the voices of incarcerated and other historically erased youth across rural Montana and restores those voices to the community narrative.
I've worn many hats since I first fell in love with Free Verse in August of 2016. Currently, I teach writing workshops in jails, prisons, inpatient psychiatric units, and as part a prison diversion parole program at the Missoula Public Library. We create sacrosanct spaces that allow their minds and their work to travel beyond the walls of closed institutions through connection, creativity, and access to the arts, poetry, and humanities.
On any given week, we might read Kinsale Drake, listen to a poem by Maya Angelou or a rap by Eminem, collage, draw zany self portraits, fold zines, write poetry, or work on a puzzle. Our classrooms are necessarily unconventional. My goal is to bring humanity into inhumane spaces and help my kids travel beyond the cinderblock walls they're placed in, not to presume to "teach" them anything.
