KWH House Pick Sept 8, 2013
in The Twin Cities, MN
Dear Fellow KWH Fans,
I am currently running a USA Projects fundraiser for a memoir which incorporates narrative and lyric essays, physical documents, interviews, poems, fragments, and photographs. It will explore the story, and the lack of story, around the loss of my brother, who “escaped” from prison in 1982 and was not heard from again. I have written about this subject poem-by-poem for decades; there are “brother poems” in both of my published poetry collections. For various practical reasons, which seem impractical now, I have put off writing the whole story and I have put off connecting this personal story to a larger picture. I want to devote my time to writing it, cohesively and in-depth.
The story examines ideas about imprisonment and liberation, family, absence and presence, healing, justice, and real clumsy love. According to documentary filmmaker and artist Ashley Hunt, the U.S. currently has the largest percentage of incarcerated people of any nation at any time. With the rise of the for-profit prison system and other troubling factors, I believe chronicling the causes and effects of one particular family’s experience to be relevant and humanizing.
If you have time to take a look and you like what you see, please consider supporting the project or spreading the word to interested parties.
Thank you! Paula
http://www.usaprojects.org/project/f_ck_your_punishment_culture
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Knox Writers' House 
Posted on September 9, 2013
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