I started the workshop at Graterford Prison in January, 2017. I wanted to do this for a long time and my semi-retirement enabled me to think I finally had the time to devote to the project. Early in my career, I was the Director of the Vocational Guidance Unit for the Philadelphia Prison System, and over the years, I developed a specialty in addictions and criminal justice which included teaching college-level courses in criminal justice at West Chester University. My doctoral dissertation focused on the developmental life course of men who had established productive lives post-addiction and incarceration.  

With these experiences, and as a poet myself, I fully expected to find poets at Graterford. Graterford was replaced by the new prison, Phoenix, in 2018. When face-to-face access was suspended due to the pandemic, I started conducting the workshop via email exchange in the Spring of 2020. I conduct the workshop in the same ways I have experienced workshops myself in my growth as a poet: suggest a prompt that focuses on a subject; give examples of poems, my own or others that might be responses to the prompt; and ask for participants to write a poem. When conducted in person, copies of each participant’s poem are handed out and each poet receives feedback and suggested edits for their work (this is now via email only from me).  

Ten poems from five poets from the initial launch of this workshop were published in the Fall 2017 Schuylkill Valley Journal, V45. (For a more detailed account of the beginnings of the workshop, see my essay included in SVJ). The poems these men have written in response to the workshop have been remarkable. Sometimes raw and in need of editing, at times insightful, wise and vivid; and the poets are learning to re-write and re-visit their work, developing that most important question that I have found to propel my own work forward: How can I improve this poem? 

~F.X. Baird