“And for those hours, we weren’t in prison. We were transformed to a different world.”

A new podcast explores the power of the humanities in Wisconsin prisons.

When Dasha Kelly Hamilton first walked through the metal detectors at Racine Correctional Institution (RCI) 17 years ago, she’d seen prisons only on television and in movies (including every season of Oz). As correctional officers ushered her through a steel door that locked behind her, she was nervous.

“There’s a guard tower, and you just see this perimeter landscape of barbed wire,” Hamilton says, “and then you remember where you are.” But as soon as Hamilton entered the prison library, her nerves settled. “Any library anywhere where there are books on the walls, just makes it a different space,” she says.

Hamilton kicked off her visit by performing a poem, and then she led her “fellas,” as she calls them, in a poetry slam workshop. Though she’d led plenty of workshops before, something special took place that day. “I love seeing the same work flourish in a different way inside that building,” she says. “[The residents] need the interaction for different reasons. They need the writing release for different reasons.”

Weeks earlier, she’d sat down for coffee with RCI coordinators to discuss ideas for the workshop. “ [The coordinators] were really surprised at the number of men who were interested in a poetry session,” Hamilton recalls. “When they were thinking about all the things that they could offer in terms of programming, they actually put poetry on the list as a joke. And then, these men showed up with their notebooks and their scribbles.” The residents were eager to write, so the coordinators enlisted Hamilton for her poetry expertise.

The one-day poetry workshop flourished into a 17-year program now known as “Prose and Cons,” named by one of the poets in the program. The participants plan their own meetings, create their own writing prompts, and organize their own poetry slams. Though Hamilton continues to visit, the program has grown into something much bigger than her. “It’s become an experience that we co-create,” Hamilton says.

“Initially, I didn’t know what to make of it,” says Josh Wells, a poet who joined the program during his time at RCI. “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.”

Josh’s story, along with the experiences of other poets in the program, are featured in the newest season of the Human Powered podcast, called “Humanity Unlocked,” which Hamilton cohosts with Milwaukee-based storyteller and community organizer Adam Carr. A project of Wisconsin Humanities, this season explores the positive impact that poetry, writing, storytelling, and newspaper publishing can have on incarcerated people in Wisconsin. (Go here to subscribe on various podcast platforms.)

Episode one focuses on poets of the “Prose and Cons” program and the experiences that lead Hamilton from publishing her first poem at age six, to performing on the HBO show Def Poetry Jam, to leading poetry workshops in the RCI prison. Episode two explores the transformative power of storytelling at Oakhill Correctional Facility, where students enrolled in the University of Wisconsin Odyssey Beyond Bars program write and perform true stories from their lives. Episode three illuminates the tradition of prison newspapers in Wisconsin and beyond, featuring an interview with a former editor of The Prison Mirror, often considered the best prison newspaper in the United States.

This podcast series is a rare opportunity for non-incarcerated citizens to hear directly from folks who live or have lived behind bars. As this series reminds us, incarcerated Wisconsinites are Wisconsinites; their stories are more expansive than their crimes or the time they spend in prison. The series is humanizing, eye-opening, and full of hope.

The theme that rings truest for me is the freedom that humanities can offer for folks living behind bars. “For those hours, we weren’t in prison,” says Fontaine Baker on the podcast about his experience in the “Prose and Cons” program. “We were transformed to a different world.”

Though the focus of “Humanity Unlocked” is the transformative power of the humanities, the series also, importantly, brings attention to Wisconsin’s shocking incarceration rate. Thirty-five thousand Wisconsinites live behind bars, and imprisonment rates have risen dramatically in the last 40 years. Though it’s well known that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, Wisconsin’s track record is especially shameful when it comes to our Black citizens; Wisconsin imprisons Black men at a higher rate than any other U.S. State, with about one out of every 36 Black Wisconsinites currently in prison.

Even if incarceration hasn’t directly touched your life, it has affected your community. My own life has been altered by incarceration—and, in turn, by the humanities. In 2016, my little sister Teghan went to prison—a possibility I’d (ignorantly) never considered, being from a white, middle-class family. Like Dasha Kelly Hamilton on her first visit to RCI, everything I knew about prison had come from television. I used to love Orange Is The New Black but could never watch another episode after prison became a reality in my life.

On my first visit, I shook with nervousness as the correctional officers ushered me through the metal detectors, through a vault that locked behind me, onto a shuttle, and finally into a building that reminded me of an empty school cafeteria. I took a seat on a blue plastic chair situated behind a strip of tape that I was instructed not to cross. Residents in beige jumpsuits and clunky black shoes filed in and gave their visitors the allotted three-second hug. After that, no touching.

When my sister walked in, I hugged her over a jumpsuit that draped her small body like a tarp. It was the first time we’d touched in ages. She’d been in a county jail for several months, and we’d been allowed to visit only through thick bulletproof glass, smeared with mysterious fluids from previous guests. And though we were finally together in the same room, a chasm of distance stretched between us. We both knew that at the end of the visit, I’d drive home, and she’d stay trapped within those barbed wire fences.

Between visits, we wrote to each other over email, and soon we came up with a project—one that would ease my angst while giving my sister a chance for mental escape. We would write a novel together.

Teghan hand-wrote chapters and mailed them to me in prison-issue envelopes. Sometimes I’d receive three envelopes in my mailbox at a time, and I wouldn’t be able to wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the day. I typed up my sister’s words and emailed them back to her via the prison email system. I’d also send my own chapters.

Every time we stepped into the story, we created our own world where prison didn’t exist. We became Lucy and Callie—the high school characters we’d invented, who drove around the country on a covert, gummy-worm-and-coffee fueled road trip.

In my conversation with Dasha Kelly Hamilton, she described her workshop similarly—as a different world. “It’s like a Narnia you create with this poetry,” Hamilton says. “And it’s not even about the poetry. Poetry becomes an entry point to healing, to honesty, to vulnerability.”

Likewise, writing with my sister wasn’t about the story itself. It was about connecting and being honest with each other. Though we were creating a fictional story, our letters and emails always began and ended with life updates, memories, and cheese puns. I became closer than ever with her, which is a gift I cherish, even now that she’s home.

“When I found a calm spot to write chapters or read Mel’s, I was in a new place,” Teghan told me. “I was able to forget reality and just escape. I wrote until my fingers were cramped and calloused, but the permanent indent on my finger just made me smile each time I felt it. The mark represented a space where I could be genuinely myself, share my most embarrassing poop stories, show emotions, and not be judged or seen as a target.”

Oh, the poop stories. You’ll have to read the novel, which comes out in fall, 2024.

My sister came home in 2021. Most of the interviewees in “Humanity Unlocked” have come home, too. But as the podcast series reminds listeners, people can use art to create their own kind of freedom wherever they are, whether inside or outside the walls of a prison.

To learn more about Mel and Teghan Hammond’s novel, which is being published with Knopf, sign up for their newsletter.

For more about Hamilton’s poetry collection, A Line Meant, which includes work by incarcerated poets and comes out October 2024, subscribe to the Jaded Ibis Press newsletter.