Alison, Anthony, Kent, Laurie Jo, Nadya, Scott
Neighborhoods: Many neighborhoods throughout Chicago.
What is your project?
Each month, we send a poem and a letter to every man in Tamms Supermax Prison and respond to every letter we receive. If someone sends a poem they wrote and wants feedback about it, we do that too.
We invite friends (and friends of friends) to these events and welcome more people to get involved. (If you’re in Chicago and would like to come to a mailing event, just e-mail us at TammsPoetryCommittee@gmail.com. We usually get about ten people to come. The gatherings are very fun. We have a potluck and sign the letters and stuff the envelopes.)
Neighborhoods: Many neighborhoods throughout Chicago.
What is your project?
Each month, we send a poem and a letter to every man in Tamms Supermax Prison and respond to every letter we receive. If someone sends a poem they wrote and wants feedback about it, we do that too.
We invite friends (and friends of friends) to these events and welcome more people to get involved. (If you’re in Chicago and would like to come to a mailing event, just e-mail us at TammsPoetryCommittee@gmail.com. We usually get about ten people to come. The gatherings are very fun. We have a potluck and sign the letters and stuff the envelopes.)
Would you give us a few excerpts from the letters you have received?
Yes, see below!
“Please continue to reach out to us because you never know how your letter may change a person's outlook on his situation and give a person just the amount of hope they need. Believe me, to receive some mail really touches a person especially in this situation.”
"I know my letter may come as a surprise to you, just as yours was to me. Now I'm curious do you people really care about the situation we are in down here in this hellhole? (Tamms) Me, personally, sometimes I feel like the people in the world don't care about us, the pain we are in, this everyday suffering. Maybe I am wrong. I hope so. And if you all do care, it's good to know."
Why did you start your project?
Laurie Jo and Scott had been involved with the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), the Prison Phone Project and the Tamms Committee. Knowing that their friends Anthony and Nadya were poets and that Anthony sent friends his regular poetry selections via e-mail, they decided to send poems to the Tamms prisoners. After Kent and Alison got involved, the project developed into a correspondence, with the prisoners telling us which poems they liked best and least, some of them sending us their own poems, discussing their situation, requesting books and information, and asking for pen pals.
We started this project because we wanted to provide the prisoners with some mail. The men in Tamms are in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have no human contact. They have no library, no classes, no enrichment programs, no religious congregation, no group activities, and no communal space. Food is served in the cell. They are not allowed phone calls. The inmates suffer from extreme sensory deprivation, loneliness, and depression. Although the prison was designed as a temporary facility to improve behavioral problems, many of the men have been housed there since the prison opened in 1998 and have had no opportunity to demonstrate good behavior and get moved back to a regular prison.
This can be thought of as “a neighbors project” because it extends the notion of “our neighbors” to the people in prison, who often live very near us but remain invisible. Here in Illinois, for the last 9 years, these men have been subjected to conditions that constitute torture, a fact recognized by both the United Nations and Amnesty International. Many of these men have families on the outside, who are part of our communities. And we should also consider how isolation and sensory deprivation could possibly prepare these guys to be our neighbors once again. We encourage others to think of prisoners not as permanent exiles, but as community members, many of whom will be returning to the neighborhoods they left.
How long does the project take you?
We held our first mailing in July 2006, and we generally have had about two public meetings a month. One is the group letter-signing and envelope-stuffing. The other is what we call a Potluckdown (potluck + lockdown) because we have a potluck and lock ourselves down in one location until we answer all of the letters that we received that month. We work on the project individually as well.
Laurie Jo and Scott had been involved with the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), the Prison Phone Project and the Tamms Committee. Knowing that their friends Anthony and Nadya were poets and that Anthony sent friends his regular poetry selections via e-mail, they decided to send poems to the Tamms prisoners. After Kent and Alison got involved, the project developed into a correspondence, with the prisoners telling us which poems they liked best and least, some of them sending us their own poems, discussing their situation, requesting books and information, and asking for pen pals.
We started this project because we wanted to provide the prisoners with some mail. The men in Tamms are in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have no human contact. They have no library, no classes, no enrichment programs, no religious congregation, no group activities, and no communal space. Food is served in the cell. They are not allowed phone calls. The inmates suffer from extreme sensory deprivation, loneliness, and depression. Although the prison was designed as a temporary facility to improve behavioral problems, many of the men have been housed there since the prison opened in 1998 and have had no opportunity to demonstrate good behavior and get moved back to a regular prison.
This can be thought of as “a neighbors project” because it extends the notion of “our neighbors” to the people in prison, who often live very near us but remain invisible. Here in Illinois, for the last 9 years, these men have been subjected to conditions that constitute torture, a fact recognized by both the United Nations and Amnesty International. Many of these men have families on the outside, who are part of our communities. And we should also consider how isolation and sensory deprivation could possibly prepare these guys to be our neighbors once again. We encourage others to think of prisoners not as permanent exiles, but as community members, many of whom will be returning to the neighborhoods they left.
How long does the project take you?
We held our first mailing in July 2006, and we generally have had about two public meetings a month. One is the group letter-signing and envelope-stuffing. The other is what we call a Potluckdown (potluck + lockdown) because we have a potluck and lock ourselves down in one location until we answer all of the letters that we received that month. We work on the project individually as well.
What were the major challenges you encountered during your project?
Writing to supermax prisoners is both rewarding and a huge responsibility. We have gotten a range of interesting, insightful and enlightening letters, and we have learned a great deal about how the prisoners cope with a situation that can’t imagine enduring for even a week. We have also gotten to know individual prisoners as they have written to us about current events, their families, their past experiences, and how they got there. They also send us their poetry and many incredible drawings. But, because we are sending mail to the entire prison, we do need more people to help us respond and to become pen pals.
What do you enjoy most about your project?
We enjoy having dinner together, reading the prisoners’ letters, writing response letters, receiving reactions to the poems, reading the poems they send us, and knowing that we have done one of the few things you can do for a supermax prisoner.
What would you have done differently if you had to do it all over again?
We wish that we had developed a fundraising strategy early on. The mailings cost a lot and we would like to purchase and send more books to the prisoners. Plus, you’ll get a lot of requests from prisoners for various resources—books, music, medical advice— and you’ll have to either say no or find the money.
What’s your advice for other people who want to do a similar project?
You need a core group of committed, responsible people. Also, make sure you have a good system for keeping track of all of the correspondence from the prisoners.
What’s your next project?
We’re holding a series of public letter-writing events to bring attention to the conditions at Tamms. The first one is on June 28th at 6 pm, at Gallery 400 at the College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago, 400 S. Peoria Street. Come hear former inmates explain how they coped with life in Tamms and the effects it had on them, and view letters and artwork from current prisoners. Cynthia Kobel, the Executive Director of the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Foundation and the Director of Tamms Supermax Committee, will discuss the problems created by extreme isolation over long periods of incarceration. Afterwards, there will be a group mailing. This event is part of the Pathogeographies exhibition at Gallery 400.
What would you like to see Neighbors Project accomplish?
It would be great if the Neighbors Project encouraged people to learn about supermax prisons and to join us at one of our social events.
