Ten years ago, our nonprofit VOX Press began offering what for Mississippi was unprecedented (although old hat elsewhere, even ten years ago): humanities-based workshops for people incarcerated in Mississippi prisons. We started with creative writing workshops offered to men incarcerated at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman Farm. The program would gradually grow to become the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative, and we have now offered programs in several Mississippi prisons throughout the state, with effort to reach a number of different demographics—men, women, the elderly, veterans, disabled people, youth, etc. Although creative writing is still the main feature of the program, the program has also offered art expression workshops, theater workshops, philosophy workshops, even wellness and meditation workshops. Our instructors vary in their background and interests, but typically instructors hold at least a masters in the topic of the workshops they are conducting. Classes are typically modeled after the traditional college workshop or lecture course.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I was offering a workshop in Parchman’s Unit 31, which mainly houses elderly people as well as those with severe or terminal illnesses. Quarantine measures meant that we had to finish the class mostly through written correspondence. Around the same time, Parchman’s Unit 29—a medium-security complex that includes Mississippi’s death row and which is notorious for its dire conditions—was convulsed by a series of uprisings that lasted for the better part of four months. The unrest was eventually mostly suppressed by the same COVID-19 lockdown measures that had scuttled the class I was teaching.
By the summer of 2021, with pandemic restrictions lifting, I was asked by the prison to offer a writing workshop to Unit 29 because, as one of the wardens put it, “We think it would help with offender unrest.” I agreed to teach there if I could also teach those who were kept in solitary confinement, only allowed to leave their cages twice a week to shower, as well as for an hour or two of “yard.” To my surprise, the prison agreed. The prison wouldn’t let them out for a classroom setup, so I taught each person separately, going from cell to cell. It was a harsh environment to teach in. It was inordinately noisy. The men have to shout across the zone to talk with each other because they’re locked in cells by themselves. Four televisions, bolted at different angles to a large iron pillar at the center of the zone, blare at maximum volume all day. One of the ways that the men continued to protest their horrible conditions and bad guards was to start fires, so often something was burning: the smoke from smoldering cardboard, asbestos, clothing, bath towels—whatever would burn—was overwhelming.
I worked with my students in Unit 29 for about three years before eventually I was caught up arbitrarily in a ban that impacted several writing instructors. As much as possible, I continue to communicate with them through mail and telephone.
The poems shared here for National Poetry Month 2025 represent a small sampling of the work produced by the students and which we were able to share in the anthology Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison. Recently, much of Unit 29 was marked for closure by the governor of Mississippi in recognition of its brutality, though as of this writing several dozen men on death row remain locked in it.
—Louis Bourgeois
Executive Director, VOX Press
Editor, Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison
Header image: Aron Yigin / Unsplash