Poetry from San Quentin

San Quentin Chapbooks and Anthologies

Introduction

These books were written as part of a poetry class at San Quentin taught by Judith Tannenbaum. For four years (1985-1989), a group of prisoners, including many serving life sentences, met to write poetry, discuss their words and experiences, and meet some of the best poets in the Bay Area. The class produced three anthologies, a series of chapbooks and broadsides, and a tape of readings.

Judith wrote a beautifully written book about this experience, Disguised As A Poem, a title taken from one of the poems included in the chapbooks on this site. The book is a deeply personal account of what it is like to try to reach across the walls that divide the prison from the outside world -- with poetry as a bridge to that journey. It is a book about the depths involved in prison culture, and a trust that is built slowly, through time. But it is more than about prison, and one may never read a poem in quite the same way again.

In Disguised as a Poem, Judith writes:

"In class one Monday night, I talked of my idea for our next publication project: a series of chapbooks. Each student would design and assemble a small book of his poems and I'd distribute these as a series.
"Coties asked how long each book would take to create. 'Will it take a month of Mondays?' he asked. And Month of Mondays became the name of our press."

The Books

Five chapbooks or anthologies are included on this site.

Beads of Wax: Poetry by Elmo Chattman, Jr. Chattman was one of the main witers in the group at San Quentin, and edited the San Quentin News for a time. Judith writes that "Elmo watched me walk into San Quentin as though I were a traveller in some foreign land." He became a guide to that land. Within the first few weeks, he told her:
"My father always used to say; 'Better to be dead than mistreated.' I didn't know where he was coming from. I was a kid in California, and he was from Louisiana. I'd pull the tab on a beer and shake my head thinking, nothing's worse than being dead. But now I understand."
In His Own Shoes appeared in December, 1986. It features poems by Elmo Chattman, Spoon Jackson, and other members of the writing group.
No Distance Between Two Points: A chapbook by Spoon Jackson. In Disguised as a Poem, Judith describes a special relationship that Jackson had with school children in Point Arena:
They listened to Spoon describe being kept in a cell at the city jail across the street from the high school where he had attended, and what he heard from that cell. . . It was to Spoon, especially, the kids addressed their letters and poems. Spoon -- whose world included wildflowers and butterflies, as did their world. Spoon -- a country kid who "was nineteen when I got busted."
Nothing But the Real was written by Coties Perry in 1987. It contains a poem that became the title of the final anthology.
The Real Rap was the last project. It was a book for youth with a very special purpose. As Judith writesi:
By early fall, Coties could no longer bear what he was seeing on TV, in letters from home, and on San Quentin's yard. He came to the office and showed me a poem that ended: 'Homeboy/Homegirl/We gotta wake up/and take it all in/piece by piece/All the droppings count/cause it's your life.'
"'We've got to do something, Judith,' Coties said as he looked up from reading his poem. So, at Coties' suggestion, we began work on our last class anthology: a book of poems for kids getting in trouble."
When the book came back from the printer, I sent copies to over four hundred schools, juvenile facilities and community programs. So many requests came in for additional copies that the Warden asked San Quentin's printshop to prepare a second printing."

Addresses

Please take the time to write to some of the authors included in these books.