Description
Book SynopsisWhen the Smoke Cleared contains poetry written by incarcerated poets in Attica Prison and journal entries and poetry by Celes Tisdale, who led poetry workshops following the uprising there in 1971.
Trade Review"
When the Smoke Cleared . . . beautifully documents what it means to bear witness while teaching, and the great responsibility that comes with ushering voices from the inside of prison walls to the outside. . . .
When the Smoke Cleared is a time capsule of the sharp minds, open hearts, and courageous souls of men brutalized by the United States criminal justice system." -- Malcolm Tariq * PEN America *
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When the Smoke Cleared . . . reveals a great deal about survival in the wake of state violence and about the uses of prison education. . . . Supporting efforts like Tisdale’s are important, not because they reform the institution, but because they can aid incarcerated people in building inside-outside relations and solidaristic organizing across facilities." -- Elias Rodriques * Dissent *
"Among the many strengths of this anthology is a blunt acknowledgment of the uprising as part of much larger historical mechanisms: namely, the last gasps of the civil rights movement and the nation’s violent reaction to Black liberation. . . . The poems serve as a bulwark against the forgetting of the Attica uprising itself, but they also document the inner life and creative expression of the incarcerated—making for a visceral and intimate argument in favor of prison abolition." -- J. Howard Rosier * The Nation *
"A riveting contribution to contemporary literary history and recent social histories of the uprising. This volume poses far-reaching questions about prisons as sites of cultural production and the mobilization of Black political subjectivity at the beginning of what we now call the age of mass incarceration." -- David Sherman * Los Angeles Review of Books *
"A valuable glimpse into the beginnings of prison and justice writing programs in the US, especially ones focused on the African American experience, as well as a reminder of the historical and continued importance of such workshops in transforming the US carceral system." -- Timothy Bradford * World Literature Today *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Introduction: Celes Tisdale’s Poetry Workshop at Attica / Mark Nowak 1
Introduction to the Original Printing of
Betcha Ain’t: Poems from Attica (Detroit: Broadside Press, 1974 / Celes Tisdale 25
Betcha Ain’t: Poems from Attica 29
Celes Tisdale’s Attica Poem and Journals 71
When the Smoke Cleared: More Poems from Attica 103
Epilogue: Remember This 133
Acknowledgments 135
Appendix: Workshop Documents 137
