About a week or two ago, when I was walking down my dorm hall and passed the giant bulletin board (usually publicizing events, retreats, etc), a purple poster caught my eye. It was titled “Stories From Inside Prison: Formerly Incarcerated Youth Share Their Life Stories and Poetry!”. Sounded pretty interesting to me! And between getting settled in, handling schoolwork and a cappella practice, I haven’t been to too many events on campus; I thought this would be a good one to start with.
So last Wednesday night my floor mate and I made our way over to LSC. Running the lecture/poetry reading was a group called Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop. Free Minds is a book club that introduces reading and writing to young inmates in hopes that it will positively change the way these individuals express themselves. When these men, some being in jail at an age as young as 14, joined the club, they started reading an array short stories, novels, and poetry. Soon after, many of them began writing their own poetry: poetry that described their experiences and feelings toward incarcerated life. They found freedom in writing and saw it as a meaningful way to spend their time. But the goal of Free Minds doesn’t end in the D.C Jail; Free Minds works with these men even after incarceration by helping them find jobs, go back to school, and reach the goals they never thought possible. At the event, about 5 or 6 members of group came and spoke about their lives, from before, during and after prison. You can check out some of poetry written by members of the club on the Free Minds website!
http://freemindsbookclub.org/poetry-blog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX9CYdyD2JE&list=UUyn6-XHYbonBxua4UVIdViw
Being a writing enthusiast, it was really amazing to see how writing impacted the lives of these men. There is something that is so therapeutic about putting words on paper and being able to get rid of all the little thoughts that are bugging you. So I definitely enjoyed this presentation!
After talking about that event in detail, I try to keep this short! On Saturday afternoon I attended the Red Flag Football tournament since Men and Women for Octaves sang the national anthem, which you can check out here:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=776795235692056&set=vb.109923682379218&type=2&theater
The flag football tournament was an event used to promote awareness for sexual assault and dating abuse. There were representatives from the Women’s Center running the tournament including one who read a poem she wrote about an abusive relationship. Although I wasn’t participating in the games, my friend Alex told me he had a lot of fun! I’ll definitely be on the look out for more events like this. It was a great way to bring attention to an unfortunate, but prevalent, social issues.
Weeks like this remind me that there really is always something going on at the U, and I know I’ll be attending different types of events in the future.
Hope you all have a great rest of the week! 🙂 And students, enjoy fall break!
Catie
Catherine E. Bombard
Hi! My name's Catherine, but you can call me Catie and I'm a sophomore from Wayne, NJ here at the University of Scranton. I'm an English major, Communication minor hoping to have a career in publishing one day. I'm a member and the publicist of Octaves, an a cappella group on campus, along with being a writer and editor for The Aquinas, the student newspaper. Thanks for checking out the student blogs and I hope you enjoy hearing about my "Scranton Experience"! :)
