Human Powered Season 2, Episode 1 Transcript
"Death defying feats"
Dasha: So the other day, I was running a poetry workshop…
Dasha (Tape): man, I'm just really grateful, 1. to lay eyes on all of you, um, and that you made time today. And as a pastor say, I won't be before you long.
<laughter and banter>
Dasha: And listen, this is not my first rodeo. I run writing workshops all the time. Sometimes they're in elementary school classrooms, they're in company boardrooms or prison libraries. In this case I was at a community coworking space in Milwaukee.
Dasha (Tape): So we're going to do a super, super fast writing exercise. It's not going to be the full Dasha workshop, but it's gonna get you scribbling. And then we're going to talk a bit about how scribbling got you all here (laughter.) Um and the whole point is to get people to believe in death defying feats, and sometimes the death defying feat of knowing who you are and how you are is a gift all unto itself.
So to get us going on the tech side, and just to kind of set the room, if you could, just your name in the mic and how you met me and we'll go around and then I'll get started.
Andron: My name is Andron Lane — activist, community organizer, and just all around Black man.
I met Dasha at RCI.
Dasha: The Racine Correctional Institution.
Andron: And one of the fellas told me, come do this writing class. I'm like, all right, writing class in the library, like, okay.
Ever since then, like, she's been like my mama, my auntie, my sister, my, my everything, you know what I mean? This is my people and I love her.
{>>music up<<}
I know why tears evaporate
One today is worth two tomorrows
So yesterday I cried
To myself, because I was finding me
I know why tears evaporate
My job, because, I needed to be closer to home
It was costly driving there, and more damage to my car
I know why tears evaporate
I remember looking out a window
In the van on the first time driving to prison
And I was wondering that, I would rather be anywhere else in the world watching the grass grow
As we drive away
I know why tears evaporate
I felt like I have not respected my words
Because I have not gave them enough security
I know why tears evaporate
Dasha: Give a brother his poetry snaps…
Hello and congratulations. You just made the best decision of your day listening to a new episode Human Powered. I'm Dasha Kelly Hamilton, poet and creative change agent and leader of writing workshops like the one you just heard. And I am co-hosting this new season with my good friend Adam Carr.
Adam: Hey, Dasha. It's true. I'm Adam Carr, co-host, public historian, former community news editor and whatever the situation demands. This season on human powered, Wisconsin Humanities and Field Noise Soundworks are bringing you stories of the humanities at work within the mass incarceration system.
We are so excited to share these stories with you.
Dasha:So excited, so excited.
Adam: You know, going back to season one, the goal of this podcast has been to unearth stories of how people are having a big impact on their communities through something we don't always think about: the humanities. We've explored the state and seen real projects that have opened up important conversations, created big changes, and I think it's fair to say strengthened the civic fabric of our state.
This season, we're looking at one particular kind of community: prison populations. Dasha, did you know something like 1.8 million people are incarcerated in the US — and 35,000 Wisconsinites are behind bars at any given time?
Dasha: That’s a lot of humans.
Adam: And according to a 2021 report by the sentencing project, Wisconsin has the highest rate of black imprisonment in the country. But this isn't just a city problem or a black problem. This is happening in rural areas and suburban ones in Wisconsin too. So each episode this season highlights people doing humanities work in carceral spaces. And how that works is—and I don't think I'm overstating this—changing people's lives
(music)
Well, Dasha, you and I have been on a number of adventures together,
Dasha: Quite a few
Adam: Aand it's the first time we're doing a podcast
Dasha: Isn’t that amazing? We traveled all over the place and we got to the podcast last.
Adam: And you know we've learned to trust each other. We've learned to rely on each other; I wanna tell our listeners a little bit why, we trust ourselves and each other to explore a topic that I think is very serious, uh, is very challenging. But it's also one that is very near and dear to both of our hearts.
Dasha: I think that we've come to trust each other because we lean into things that make us curious and things that pull out our humanity.
I know that's what the things that draw my attention anyway. And so to see you in the rooms that I was in and also in conversation, you lead with your curiosity and your creativity all for the greater good, and that does end us up in some very random places, but conversation's always amazing. So we're gonna be okay.
Adam:And Dasha, not only are you able to produce out of your being, out of your body, out of your mouth, incredible words but you're also able to pull those out of people, especially ones that surprise themselves that aren't poets, that stand in front of audiences and regale them on a regular basis.
We're lucky that we heard in the intro just a few seconds ago, a workshop. Can you tell us a little bit about the workshop that, that we were just listening to the, the fellas that were involved and how you connected with them.
Dasha:So, this is a session with some fellas that were in writing workshops with me when they were incarcerated and they're all out and home now and it was really great to have them all in this space together. And it's always an honor to see people be able to relax instantly in a space that I've created. 'Cause they know where we're going. They don't know where we're going. I take that back. They, they know wherever we land, they're going to be safe. So that was really great to see them all and how the, the vibe was just instant. It was instant.
Adam:Beautiful. And we are gonna get back into that workshop now. Should we invite our listeners to participate too? 'Cause you're doing a workshop.
Dasha:I mean, I think we should, because the best part are the people who don't think it's for them. I didn't think poetry's for me either. And here we are. So absolutely. Get something to write with and something to write on. Or if you're driving, just think of the prompts and follow along in your head. That's how most of my poems start anyway.
{>>instrumental hip-hop beat fades in<<}
Dasha (workshop tape): So I'd like you to think of three phrases, three sentences that describe where you're from, and it could be a description of what you see in grandma's house. It could be a statement of fact of things that happened. It could be a fantasy of how you wish it were or what it meant to you. But three statements about where you're from.
All right. When you have those three statements, you want to skip a line.
{music break}
Adam:So let's start with where Dasha is from.
Dasha: Mm, I see what we're doing here. Trying do prompts against me. Okay. Okay. Okay. But I have been prepared for this. Let's see, uh, where Dasha is from. I am from PO Boxes. I am from military salutes at 5:00 PM. I am from a tiny insular family that has traveled the globe representing a larger, very spread out, complicated family tree. That's where I'm from and I would say who I am from that is someone who's inspired and intrigued by human movement. Being an army brat, you can't be anything else.
Adam: Dasha, you're giving the workshop and being the best student at the same time, I would expect no less from you.
Dasha: Takes a bow.
Adam: And you remember way back when we were starting this project, you and I sat down and recorded a conversation. We were just figuring out how this series was gonna work and honestly, we weren't even sure we were gonna use that conversation in an episode.
Dasha: Mmmhmm.
Adam: But it was a great conversation and I really want other folks to hear it. To hear about you and your work and your poet origin story.
Dasha:Hmm, like a superhero. (laughter)
Adam:Exactly.
{>>music break here<<}
Dasha (from the interview tape with Adam): My first poem-poem ever was, I would’ve been six years old. The local news, you know has the morning show. So Miss Janey invited people to send in their pictures and send in their poems. And I also got Highlights magazine.
I'm sure I'd seen somewhere how do you write a poem, and both of those things that published,
Adam: Six-year-old Dasha was on a roll and that kicked off a life-time of writing, but her real first break came in her twenties, when a coworker approached her with an opportunity.
Dasha (from the interview tape with Adam): He was one of the bartenders, I was one of the cocktail waitresses, He was starting his literary magazine. I'm a writer. What, I can make, I can definitely write some stories for you.
Adam:So he wanted to meet girls?
Dasha: <laughter>
Adam:The dude was like, I am starting a literary magazine. That is such thin soup.
Dasha: Oh the literary magazine play…oh Dasha. Oh you young thing you.
Dasha and Adam:
<laughter>
Dasha: And this was absolutely that season where you're going to try all the things.
When I went to my first open mic they’re like, Hey, don't you have some poems, like, well, not really. I've Got this, these things well, bring ‘em!
Adam: So, she brought “these things” and was introduced to the world of live, performance poetry.
Dasha (from the interview tape with Adam): It was this feeling and people were reading things that were great and not great, but all personal. And then just this poem that I didn't really know, count as a poem, because poetry is, you know, Dickinson, and poetry is, Langston Hughes poem. There's a way that you do a poem for it to count, or you have to officially say that you're a poet for it to count as poetry. And I wasn't any of those things. These are definitely just some words I've pulled together and oh these are poems? And I'm now part of this experience and there's a response to these little things that are not these, not, not poems that turn out to be poems.
Adam (from the interview tape with Dasha): knock knock poems
<laughter>
Dasha (from the interview tape with Adam): Um, and so now being a part of the open mic
So when my, uh, my ex-husband comes, he says hey I found a building. You found a building for what? For a bar? What? Listen, we've been talking about it. I know. Okay. All right.
And so now I get to put all these things in play and do it for this thing that we're figuring out how to do. And a first thing on the calendar was having open mic night.
Adam:They started setting aside small amounts of money from drink sales to pay traveling poets and started building an audience in Milwaukee.
Dasha (from the interview tape with Adam): I remember my first national feature was Douglas Kearney. So that was the very beginning of inviting poets, to come through and so Milwaukee became a tour stop. So one of the poets that came through, and so you're seeing their bios, like, what does this poet, what do you mean you were 25th in the? What World poetry slam? How do you, what is this rank? What do you mean you slammed on a team?
Adam:Dasha had a lot of questions about the wide world of poetry, And what’s special about Dasha, is that she doesn’t just seek the answers for herself — she sows the seeds into the community and young people around her — that’s why so many in her circle know her as Mama Dasha.
Dasha (from the interview tape with Adam): Because I'm coordinating that cause I'm nurturing a community here, hosting a series. We had slams we have open mics. And at this point now we're teaching in the schools, and on a national space. I'm also now touring and featuring.
Adam: this was the early 2000s, when slam poetry was on the rise. There were tours and teams, and a major television show on HBO. Hosted by Mos Def.
{>>Def Poetry intro<<}
And there, in the first episode of season six, was Dasha.
Dasha (from interview tape with Adam): Dan Vaughn and I, we did a duet of his poem, ‘6 million ways to die’. And I chose to get married
<transitions into a recording of Dan and Dasha’s poem>
Dan and Dasha:
6 million ways to die// And I, and I chose to get married//and not that I hate my mate//I love my wife//because marriage is for life//It's just that sometimes Life's a bitch// I know he did not just call me//I said, life's a bitch then you're dying// every, every now and then. I feel as if I'm dying a slow Death….
Dasha (from interview tape with Adam): And it was one of those experiences you just won't forget. But it absolutely was the constellation of relationships and literal microphones and whiskeys and late nights and missed hours of sleep.
But that three minutes where everyone in this room, this building is listening to you, everybody…and it’s powerful
Adam: As she grew her career in many directions, Dasha became a masterful facilitator of poetry workshops, from the classroom to the boardroom and everywhere in between. And that’s when she gets invited to a prison.
Dasha (from the interview tape with Adam): My first invitation was to come and do this workshop. And I usually start with a poem of mine.
Adam: Where?
Dasha:At Racine Correctional Institution.
Adam:How nervous were you scale one to 10?
Dasha: Doing the workshop, uh, one, not nervous at all.
Adam: Performing your poem to start it, how nervous were you?
Dasha: Three.
Adam: How nervous were you on stage for Def Poetry Slam?
Dasha: Seven.
Adam: So you were only a three going into Racine Correctional and one in the workshop.
Dasha: It was going into the building.
Adam: How nervous were you going through the metal detectors?
Dasha: Eight. I watched every season of Oz. My only exposure to criminal justice is what I see on television and what I've seen in the movies. I don't know what to expect. I wasn't afraid necessarily, but it was just so much unknown.
I don't know what movie reel to prepare for, and then the physical experience of going in and it’s stark and going into one welcoming building where everything gets scanned and you lock all your things. Then you're now in this in-between space…
Tchhh <sound of a door closing>
And you are locked between this entering building before you can enter the technical property. There's a Guard tower, and you just see this perimeter landscape of barbed wire. And then you remember where you are
Adam: When I think about you going into Racine Correctional Institute, that once you got into the library, it's a room of people. You're like, oh, I know what to do. I know how to do this. I'm Dasha I'm here. I can make this happen.
All you need is you and your voice.
Dasha: That really is it though. My favorite, one of my favorite moments was leaving, Racine Correctional Institution. I've been going for some time. And Robinson said, man, I never knew words could be this strong. Robinson you made my whole trip down here worth it.
This was a, this is what is, that's what this is for.
{music}
Adam: Let’s go back to Dasha’s poetry workshop. If you’re following along, this is the second part of the prompt.
Dasha (poetry workshop tape): I'm going to ask you to think about something that you quit but for good reason. Maybe you quit that relationship for your mental health.
You quit that job, because you knew the next conversation with that coworker was not going to end well. Or you had a better opportunity someplace else.
Just three statements. It could be three different things or three statements about that. You know, I quit, I loved it, but I couldn't afford it. I loved her, but my soul couldn't afford it. I love the idea, but in real life, my skillset couldn't afford it.
Something, some place, someone, some idea that you quit but for a good reason.
Skip a line
Adam: So Dasha, tell me about the Prose and Cons Project.
Dasha: Ooh, my favorite. So Prose and Cns came out of a writing workshop that I was invited to do at Racine Correctional Institution and when I received the invitation, it was to come to the space and lead a workshop and also give a reading. So the workshop that I gave was about Poetry Slam, which they weren't familiar with.
And then in that evening, there were 10 of the fellas who were ready to share their work and compete, there is a full house of fellas who like spent literally their ice cream money to be able to come to be a part of experience. So it was really powerful, really positive. And from that we had a slam, We did the jam.
But now we've got these guys that are on the hook with this feeling, this experience. And from there it was, well, I'm kind of up the street. I can come back. I don't know. How about next month? And from there I went back, you know, for a while I went back every other month and for years I've been going back with some regularity. And one of the fellas who has now since gotten out, named it Prose and Cons.
Adam: And if you are just listening you might not see how prose and cons is spelled. How was pros and cons spelled?
Dasha: P R O S E, like stories and cons, C o n S. You know, the other things we used to call people who are incarcerated. So coming from an incarcerated person with the name we are not objectifying and all that kind of good stuff. It's kind of clever.
Adam: And for this episode, you got Josh to speak with us. Can you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to track him down to speak to.
Dasha: Oh my goodness. A thousand reasons, but primarily Josh represents what's possible when you gather humans together and give them the invitation to just be creative together. So because you create together, you create poems, you create words, you create stories, and you create community, and you create perspective.
So Josh was confronted with assumptions that he hadn't recognized as assumptions as many people with assumptions, they think they are fact. And he was brought into brotherhood with people to his own admission that he probably never would've even had conversation with. So he embodies everything that prose and cons turned out to be about, um, by going into prose and cons with something that's passionate to him, which is his story in writing.
{>>strumming acoustic guitar music comes in<<}
Josh: When I first came in, I'd heard about this group Prose and Cons, so I requested to be part of that group. And initially I didn't know what to make of it. I had never heard of slam poetry. I barely knew what spoken word looked like. I had never experienced anything like this. I knew what was happening in front of me was incredible I just didn’t know what I was hearing. But something was happening, especially as we started having the poetry slams that were being allowed within the institution. So the first slam was my first real performance and my first real taste of what this is like.
Dasha (Interview with Josh tape): How was that, I guess, the power of that experience, you know, writing together, creating together, um, figuring things out together. How did that impact your relationship with your…I'm gonna call 'em your neighbors?
Josh: Well, it was interesting cuz I started out— and look I'm, I'm still the Midwest. Southernish redneck conservative, that I always will be. So here, here I am in this environment where I'm around guys that are completely different worldview.
But over time I started realizing that these guys are saying things and sometimes they're pissing me off of what they have to say, but I can't stop listening. And I started realizing there's something here within the words within the power of the word itself. And that's when I started listening a lot closer. and it's not that I necessarily would agree or disagree. It was that I was honestly hearing now. It wasn't that my belief system fundamentally changed, but my understanding of it changed. And the conversation started shifting away from, I don't know how to put it - from a dogma to a narrative, maybe.
Dasha (Interview with Josh tape): I like that a lot. What about your narrative, being heard in a different way. Did you find that that happened in both directions?
Josh: I think it did but the thing is I had been listening. I had been processing the stories. And then I could emphasize and sympathize and then draw into that story, their narrative. Well, when you're doing that, even if the other person doesn't agree with you, all of a sudden, now they're at least listening.
They're actually hearing you. It was phenomenal. And, I started realizing this creates this community. This accountability. This being part of something that is bigger than you.
Dasha: Mmmhmm.
Josh: I was watching guys who on the outside, no one was gonna come to them and say, Hey, mentor my son. And I'm watching them taking young cats under their wing and through the medium of poetry…
Dasha (Interview with Josh tape):
Mentoring somebody's son.
Josh: <laughter>
Dasha: But how did you build accountability through poems?
Josh: It was the conversation, it was the dialogue It was the relationships that developed through it. They're just, it's these unlikely friendships that happen.
In the end, it was the honest discussion and honest debate that quite frankly should be happening society-wide and isn't happening because the honest conversations aren't happening
Dasha: You know that’s right.
Josh: it breaks you outside of that prison mindset.
Dasha: I wanna talk specifically, or hear you talk specifically about your journey of getting home.
Josh: In a lot of ways I was scared. I was, I did not know what kind of world I was walking out to cause I knew what kind of labels were going to be put on me.
But there's something bigger that I'm tied to. and there's this drive that I don't have the option of quitting.
Dasha: Mmmm.
Josh: I don't have the option of letting this obstacle or that obstacle stop me. That's just not an option, which means I have to find a way to process it. Sometimes it's ugly when I'm processing it. But there still are the blessings. There are the good things there…I get to hug my mom again. I got to get to spend time with my mom. The relationship with my dad is slowly healing.
Um, There was something happening that was bigger than anything, any one of us or any group of us was doing. It was just big to just about poetry it was
[sigh]
It was a voice being restored.
{>>music up<<}
Sometimes when we're sitting out in the world and it could be an outfit, it could be another partner. It could be a move. And it just seems too big too far, too much. You, you just couldn't possibly. So describe a moment when you thought an opportunity or a mindset was too big for you, whether you are right or wrong, whether you figured out it out later or not, but we've all stood at the base of a mountain before we knew we could climb it.
So it could be describing, I felt this, I thought that I wanted, but
maybe describe what you thought was too much for you. The volume, the pace,
You didn't think that you were ready, but who what made you think that you weren't ready? Who told you you weren't ready? Maybe you really weren't ready. Some of us do we try to jump off the porch a little bit too soon.
And lastly, what has been your relationship with your words? The ones you speak the ones you write, the ones you accept from other people or not? What has been your three statements, your relationship with words.
Skip a line.
{>>music break<<}
Adam: As our poets write about their relationship to words, there is one more person you wanted to bring into the conversation: Fontaine Baker.
Dasha:Fontaine Baker. He was one of my very, very first students, and I have to say partners in the Prose and Cons series. And he was instantly a big brother. He was a prolific writer and he was clearly someone who was in leadership as in all the fellows listened to him and his spirit was really, calm, I'm gonna say gentle, and I'm saying gentle intentionally.
You can kind of tell people the folks you don't ever wanna get on their bad side. He brought all of that into the room and still this very gentle demeanor. And he's has continued to be big brother partner- like as he's moved through the system and hopefully soon getting out of the system. So I'm really, really, really excited to have his voice in this story too.
{>>music and phone tape transition<<}
DOC Voice: Standby for Mr. Baker
Fontaine: Hello hello
Adam: Fontaine is finishing his stint inside but we were able to reach out to him over the phone. He’s been a writer basically his whole life.
Fontaine: Writing was kind of like an outlet to, basically like channel the things that I had went through early on in life. I grew up in a household of musically inclined people. And my oldest brother Vaughn, you know, he used to do rapping. And I seen how he used to tell his stories and then when I used to listen to rap, I liked the rap that really had stories to 'em that had substance, that a person can walk you through their entire lifespan in a rhyme. You know what I'm saying? And I became like a rapper So it kind of like helped me to be able to tell my stories or the stories of my friends through spoken word.
Adam: But once he was incarcerated, his writing styles changed.
Fontaine: Then I started writing short novels and little stories and things like that, man, and, you know, then the writing class happened where we had, uh, different writing classes.
Over the years and yeah, I was in one of 'em with Dasha
Adam: And Fontaine remembers that moment over 15 years ago.
Fontaine: It was like a big announcement on a unit and you know, when this announcement on the unit is something that's special that's coming.
The librarian had going on there and showed her some of her spoken word pieces and it was like, okay, here's a, a female phenomenon right here. I gotta be a part of that. You know what I'm saying? I'm want to learn as much as I possibly can while I possibly can.
Yeah. So that was it, man. And then you seen her and when she came in, she came in like, man, an aura. If you know her son she just came in like an aura. Like, Hey, this is me, this is why I'm here. Learning and teaching us how to be men, you know, from a woman commanding the room. Like, Hey, this is the reason why we here. We gonna stay on task. We gonna stay focused. We gonna laugh, we gonna enjoy ourself.
And for those hours we wasn't in prison, we was transformed to a different world — we was not there man.
Adam: So, Fontaine says the Prose and Cons group went from being a class, to something bigger.
Fontaine: So we really, really dug into Prose and Cons and we became a society. It's like we became a, a brotherhood in a sense. So imagine you being, thrust into a room with 12 or 11 individuals that you never. You seen them, but you may on the, on the compound or whatever, or even in the street, you would've never really crossed paths with them or had a conversation with them. So now it's like a bridge is being built between different races, different cultures, different individuals personalities, different writing styles, even, you know, different people with different understandings, different levels and stuff like that.
So now it opened up they environment to you as well as you open up your environment to them and it just build that bridge of comradery. One thing that I have learned, through prose and cons is that if you feel like that you don't have anything in common with any person in in the world that. You as well as I have felt pain before. So we can connect on that pain if anything, if just to have it as a starting point. Or you have experienced happiness the same way I experienced happiness. So we can connect on that happiness as a starting point no matter what race, creed, or or color or background that we come from.
Adam: And Fontaine wanted to share some of that with us. This is from a piece he wrote for a friend.
Fontaine: One of my friends, um, asked me to survey to him cuz he never been to prison, never been incarcerated. So he was like, Hey man, uh, what does it feel like to be in prison? You know what I'm saying? So I sat back and I had wrote this piece called. I lived my life inside a cell
Dear brothers and sisters,
I hope life is treating you well.
As for me, I'm best as you can be,
being that I dwell in this cell,
want to hear my problems from hell.
It's hot here.
Overpopulated,
they got us packing like sardines
by the hundreds and thousands
we've been crated,
and ain't no new appeals being slated.
They handing out time like candy.
With life without parole in a PO hole.
It's hard to understand me
on private land B,
the walls and the halls of the jails,
we the hottest stalk on our marker
with barcodes on the mail.
I live my life inside the cell.
You know that piece right there? I was like, yeah, I like that. And he going to feel it, you know?
Adam: But even within those conditions, writing helps Fontaine stay positive. And Dasha is a big part of that.
Fontaine: Man, that's just what we go through, you know? But you gotta be an optimist. You can take it and you can make it to what you want to do. You know, it's something special when a person can come into such a dark and dingy place and be that bright light and leave a piece of herself and a piece of the people that she brought in here to continue to be that bright light and teach you how to be that bright light, even in this darkened environment.
{>>music<<}
Dasha (poetry workshop tape): So this last part to bring this all together, this is where we get super poetic, but actually the beautiful part is just laying your ideas on paper you are already poetic when you take a chance to read it you will see there's already a lyricism there. So this is an abbreviated part of a workshop I was asked to put together about Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird sings. And we know what that means. If you've read it, it's a story of survival and thriving, and she can compare herself as this young girl appreciating why this bird in a cage is still singing.
So the little bit that you know, and whatever you can pull from your understanding of the natural world, what would be your replacement? So I know why the caged bird sings. I know why dogs howl at the moon. I know why ants work in teams, I don't know. So think of a thing. and you're going to drop that in between every place I asked you to skip a line.
We have these wisdoms in us until someone gives us permission to call what we already know, wisdom. We kind of skip over it as trivia.
Dasha (tape): So as you rearrange those, that's your poem. So hope that you will find space to share what you scribbled so far and it will be those phrases, that line, those phrases, that line, those phrases, that line. So while everybody's tinkering to get the language in order, you know how this show goes, you can volunteer or be voluntold.
Caliph: I know why geese flying a V-shape.
See I know why geese fly in a v-shape
I come from the hood
I come from poverty
I come from greatness
I know why geese fly in a V-shape
I quit drugs
I quit devaluing myself
I quit failing to succeed
I know why geese fly in V-shape
I felt like I couldn't become a prominent voice because I was being subjugated by the system.
I know, why geese fly in a V-shape
My relationship with words is now my career
I know why geese fly in a V-shape
Dasha: Absolutely. Absolutely.
<finger snaps>
Dasha: Alright, thank you. It’s a big thank you. Any other parting words especially about how you making this choice, that wasn't’ easy, and wasn’t given to you at the outset but at some point you arrived at you.
Andron: Don't let nobody tell you that you can't do it. That's all I’m going to say
Dasha: That's everything
Caliph: Well I believe that nothing in this life that is valuable comes without protection. The diamonds are in the rough, the pearls on the deepest crevices of the ocean. The earth throws up seashells, but it won't throw up pearls. Everything that is of value is protected. And so I know reaching your greatness in your life, your full potential, the person that you are destined to be is hidden in struggle and strife. And so we should never be discouraged because every time you wake up in the morning, a light comes back on and you breathe in and the spirit is in your body. And that very spirit that's in your body. It's concentrated power, and you never know what that will spill out once you tap into it.
Dasha: the ocean spits up shells, but never pearls is what that brother kicked out.
Room full of people: <Finger snaps>
OUTRO
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CREDITS
Human Powered is a podcast from Wisconsin Humanities and Field Noise Soundworks. Our senior producer is Craig Eley. Craig also edits and mixes the show. Producers are Jade Iseri -Ramos and Jen Rubin. Creative producer is Jessica Becker and the Executive producer is Dena Wortzel. Podcast interns are Megan Gorden, Kali Froncek, Alejandro Dominguez, Kamika Patel. Editing assistance by Terrance Bernado.
Thanks to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for letting us share the conversation we recorded with Fontaine.
The outro music is by the band Upheavel, they were a prison band at Waupun Correctional Institution in the 1970s.
I encourage you to check out some Episode Extras on the Wisconsin Humanities website where you can learn more about the people featured in the episode, and to hear the full poems told by Fontaine, Andron, Caliph, Bodine and Ventae. If you want to know where prisons are and how many people are in them we have a map where you can look at incarceration inr your county—or any country in the country. All of that is at Wisconsinhumanities.org/podcast.
And If you haven’t already, subscribe to Human Powered now so you don’t miss our new episodes.
I am Adam Carr and my co-host Dasha Kelly Hamilton and this is what happens when a public historian and a poet laureate walk into a podcast.
