When I began working as a public defender nearly a decade ago, I could not have predicted the breadth of creative talent confined behind the barbed wire and concrete walls of prisons around the country. My very first client sent me an original screenplay after we bonded over our shared passion for writing during our initial meeting. From that day forward, I asked every client I worked with whether they had a creative outlet. Almost all did; whether or not they created art before going to prison, creativity had become a sustaining force in their lives—an outlet for the violence, grief, and isolation they faced every day.
Over the course of my legal career, clients often sent my colleagues and me visual art and poetry as a way of expressing appreciation for their legal teams. As my office walls filled with beautiful cards, drawings, and heartfelt poems—and my colleagues’ desks displayed ceramic vases, jewelry, and mixed media pieces that rivaled those in art museums—I began thinking of ways to elevate the creative voices of those behind bars.
That opportunity emerged in late 2024, when I partnered with my colleague Robert Hornstein and two formerly incarcerated artists—LaVander Williams and Gregory Bolden—to organize exhibitions of work by currently and formerly incarcerated artists. Poetry was always central to these exhibits. What follows is just a small selection from the hundreds of poems we have received through our ongoing art collective, Beauty Behind Bars DC: Creativity in Confinement.
—Anokhi Shah, cofounder, co-curator, and artist for Beauty Behind Bars
Image: Lynn Danielson / Unsplash