Prison Poetry Research Articles

The Sign of Silence in the Prison Poetry in the Abbasid Era until the End of the Fourth Century AH. "A Semiotic Stylistic Study in Selected Cases"

The Sign of Silence in the Prison Poetry in the Abbasid Era until the End of the Fourth Century AH. "A Semiotic Stylistic Study in Selected Cases"

‘Prison Echoes’: Composing Poetry to Compose Oneself in British Prisons (1830s–1910s)

This paper intends to show how prison poems help paint a picture of the strategies of survival and dissent within British prisons. In a world where pencils and papers were at a premium, writing was at once subversive and vital, disruptive and essential. The study of Victorian and Edwardian prison poetry writing highlights strategies developed by prisoners to compose themselves. It contributes to a bottom-up history of prison life, as prisoners who wrote poetry sought to create – to borrow from Virginia Woolf – ‘a cell of their own’. While Victorian places of confinement may not immediately appear as a breeding ground for poetic endeavours, they are loci of creativity and means of expression for those who were, and have often been, voiceless. Behind bars, poems become ego-documents that compose personal stories and a common history of resignation, resistance, and resilience.

Prison experience in Faqe Qadir Hamawandi's poem

In This research focuses on prison poetry, which has an ancient history in Kurdish literature, and many famous Kurdish poets have been imprisoned in different eras because of their political attitudes and different opinions, and the famous Kurdish poet researcher Faqe Qadiri ham He has chosen Awandi to talk about one of the poets who recorded the most poems in prison. Prison poems are the result of the situation and reflection of the lives of the days in which the poet lived. Faqe Qadir's works describe a day when The situation in the region has caused many problems and complications because of the collapse of the Baban Emirate and the invasion of Southern Kurdistan by the Ottomans, the imprisonment of Faqe Qadir because of some of his poetic products to confront the invaders of Kurdistan and to express his sense of nationality, pride, nature, religion, suffering and suffering in prison... dedicate… In this research, based on the psychological method of some of Faqe Qadir's poems in prison, they have been put under the light of investigation

A Stylistic and Thematic Analysis of Zambian Prison Poetry: The Case of Mwembeshi Maximum Security Prison

How the same theme is expressed in different poems, among different poets, is an interesting area of inquiry because style can determine the treatment of theme. Thus, this article dealt with a stylistic and thematic analysis of selected poems written by inmates of Mwembeshi Maximum Security Prison, and the relationship between the poetry and the prisoners’ prison experience. The study proceeded from the premise that inmate poetry offers authentic experience about life in prison. To achieve its aim the study utilised thematic and stylistic analysis of the poems. Among the key findings of the study is the idea that the poems were not only authentic but were reflection of the deepest feelings of the writers, thematically fresh and touching. The study concluded that most of the poems exhibit themes and stylistic approaches that reflect their prison lived experience and that not all poems use figures of speech to express their prison lived experience.

Echoes from the Prison Walls: A Study of Select Poems by Wole Soyinka

Prison has been a space that has manifested not only physical but alsoideological restrictions and the writings from this 'space' have shapedthemselves in particular ways. Wole Soyinka's prison poetry was an outcome ofhis experiences in prison during the Nigerian civil war after his incarceration onthe charge of his writings being sympathetic to the secessionist Biafrans. Thepoetry produced in this kind of a closed 'space' is traced with a consistentawareness of being written in a restricted context. The paper shall make anattempt to analyze how the very setting of writing shapes the act ofcommunication, here in the case of Wole Soyinka's prison poetry whichthematically focuses on interacting with the immediate setting to reflect uponthe present conditions. When physical removal becomes a major way to curbexpression, this kind of writing is characterized by an awareness of therestricted space. Soyinka's poems recurrently use the strategy of the poetencountering the most mundane in the immediate environment which triggersthought and writing, primarily through the senses. 'Space' here becomes anactive manifestation of the real and the imagined, and the writing thus producedcarries such a critical 'spatial awareness.' There is an attempt in Soyinka's prisonpoetry to use the restricted 'space' as a transgressing sphere of 'otherness' tocontest boundaries, thus also seeking to reclaim the lost cultural space. The titleof the work A Shuttle in the Crypt becomes a metaphor for enlarging thisconfined present space

صورة النَّبي المَسجُون (يوسف عليه السَّلام) في شعر السُّجون الأندلسي

يوسف (ع) رسول الله هو ابن يعقوب (ع). تآمر إخوته وألقوا به في بئر عميق بغيرة. أخرجته قافلة من ذلك وباعه على يد عزيز (والي مصر). عندما نما يوسف (ع) إلى مرحلة الرجولة الكاملة، أصبح وسيمًا رائعًا لدرجة أن زوجة سيده وقعت في حبه. حاولت الاقتراب منه بنوايا خاطئة. وبعد إفلاته، زُج به في السجن بتهم باطلة بالاعتداء وبقي مسجونًا لعدة سنوات. حكم المسلمون الأندلس لنحو 8 قرون (711-1492 م). سُجن عدة شعراء لأسباب مختلفة. لقد استلهموا من بيئة زنزانات السجن وأنتجوا شعرًا رائعًا خلف قضبان السجن. وكان شعراء الأندلس الأسرى يلمحون بأشعارهم وعبارات التأبين مع الأنبياء لتقوية الشعر وتحقيق أهدافهم. اختاروا النبي يوسف (ع) لشعر سجنهم وأحاله من زوايا مختلفة. شعراء الأندلس الأسرى الذين تحدثوا عن النبي يوسف (ع) في شعر سجنهم هم؛ يحيى بن حزيل (999م)، مروان بن عبد الرحمن الثليق (1010)، محمد بن مسعود البجاني، يوسف بن هارون الرمادي (1012)، عبد الملك بن غصان الحجري (1062)، ابن زيدون (1071م)، أبو الحسن البغدادي الفوكيك ومثسم بن صمده (1091م). يسلط هذا المقال الضوء على نقاش حول السمات البارزة لحياة يوسف في شعر السجن الأندلسي، وقميصه، والذئب، وغيرة إخوته، بالإضافة إلى وصف حياته في السجن في شعرهم خلف القضبان.

Poetry as a “Sanctuary” Amidst Barbed Wire: The Dialogue of Symbols

With the 1990s, after the communist regime collapsed in Romania, the reading public could see the rapidly increasing publication of poetry composed by former prisoners of conscience. Still, to this day, such works have remained a somewhat peripheral concern of literary critics and the society alike. These writings, nevertheless, have a lot to offer in terms of meanings, beyond the aesthetic plane, in gaining further insight into the human condition and creativity amid traumatic circumstances. One may find studies about Romanian prison poetry, on the one hand, describing the abusive political power as well as victims’ resistance to it and, on the other, identifying elements of collective memories transmitted through literary discourse. However, the unique ways in which these texts have been able to help their authors maintain their moral values and identity have not undergone a thorough exploration. This article aims to offer a glimpse into this very issue and emphasise its relevance to literary, memory and trauma studies. This brief analysis hermeneutically approaches the poetry created by Bishop Ioan Ploscaru during his ideologicallymotivated incarceration. More specifically, it focuses on how, amid the dynamics between the poetic act and the prisoner’s mental state, his “rhymed reflections” gain the qualities of a ‘memory sanctuary’. This notion derives from that of symbolic “sites of memory” and relates to processes of remembering, contemplating and seeking protection. In their original, unwritten state, Ioan Ploscaru’s poems - later featured in the volume Cruci de gratii (Crosses of Prison Grates) - evoke an inner space of representation, where detention experiences get invested with new meanings. In the circumstances of life-threatening abuses, these verses illustrate how the mental (re)composing of personal poems works towards achieving the survival of conscience.

Cognitive and Perceptual Modes in Wole Soyinka’s “Prisonettes”

Prison literature has constituted an interesting area of study in literary scholarship, partly because critics have always recognised its capacity to record and perpetuate important human beliefs and ideologies. Prison poetry in particular has enjoyed a pride of place amongst prison literature in Africa. Some of the foremost African authors have chosen to reflect on their prison experience in poetic form (Dennis Brutus, Okot p'Bitek, Jack Mapanje, etc.), perhaps, in addition to other factors, because of the compactness of the form which would seem to suit the constraints imposed by prison conditions while preserving monumental human ideals. The poetry treated in this particular study is the political prison poetry and deserves to be viewed in this light. The study examined prison poetry by Wole Soyinka and adopted the theory of phenomenology to interpret poems selected from Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972). Foregrounded in this study are two modes of consciousness - cognition and perception – which are essential elements of prison poetry, and means of ‘breaking into' the experiential patterns inherent in a literary work of art. The study highlighted the poet's abusive ferocity as a reaction against Nigerian political aggressiveness and the manner of his coping with the situation.

A poesia dos presos políticos

Inscrita no amplo quadro da literatura de resistência à ditadura civil-militar brasileira, a poesia dos ex-presos políticos ainda ocupa um lugar marginal nas bibliografias primárias e nos estudos críticos sobre a produção literária de teor testemunhal. Objetivamos recensear uma amostragem significativa de elaborações poéticas escritas pelos presos políticos da ditadura, situando o campo de impasses que esse corpus diretamente relacionado à experiência do encarceramento arbitrário condensa e encena. Por se tratar de um esforço de sistematização, o presente artigo é de natureza descritiva e não visa apresentar uma análise (estética ou sociológica) dos autores, das obras ou dos poemas mencionados. Com base no campo aberto pelo debate de Heloisa Buarque de Hollanda, empregamos as expressões “poesia de cárcere” e “poesia de presos” para designar as produções poéticas de ex-presos políticos, escritas durante ou após a ditadura civil-militar brasileira. Não ignoramos a multiplicidade e a heterogeneidade desse gênero e as imprecisões e os impasses que tais designações provisórias podem engendrar. Todo esforço de reunir, classificar e inventariar é suscetível de apagamentos e equívocos. Por fim, não pretendemos fazer uma apresentação totalizante, que contemple todos os poetas do cárcere, mas listar uma amostragem significativa encontrada no processo de pesquisa. Para organizar esse trabalho de recensão, dividimos o artigo em três sessões: as obras editadas; a poesia de cárcere e a imprensa de resistência; a poesia dos presos políticos no arquivo.

شعر السجون وقضایاه بین العربیة والفارسیة دراسة مقارنة Prison poetry and issues between Arabic and Persian A comparative study

Prison poetry one of the branches of lyric poetry - emotional literature and sincere feelings which is the struggle poetry أشعار السجن أو الحبسيات هي أحد فروع الشعر الغنائي -أدب الوجدان والمشاعر الصادقة - وهو ذلک الشعر النضالي الذي ترعرع خلال الأسر أو الحبس ،وقد ضمن بعض الشعراء -الذين ذاقوا مرارة السجن أو الحبس- أشعارهم جزءا باسم الحبسيات، وهي تلک الأشعار التي يعبر فيها الشاعر عن أوضاعه الروحية والجسمية في السجن ، فهي قد ولدت في ظروف خاصة ،وارتبطت بتجربة مريرة وهي تجربة الحبس بکل ما تحمله من دلالات المنع والقمع والحصار ، وهي تلک القصائد المهربة من خلف القيود. وقد حاول الشعراء نسيان أو رتابة الحبس وما به من آلام بصناعة فضاءات أخرى عبر شعرهم تجاوزوا بها جدران السجون وما بها من قيود وحواجز کتواصلهم مع الأهل والمجتمع خارج السجن ،أو عن طريق الإيمان وأبعاده الروحية والتوبة. ويعد الحديث عن السجن والموضوعات المرتبطة به من أهم وأقدم مضامين الحبسيات؛ حيث إن الشعراء قد اهتموا فيها بوصف السجن وعلة سجنهم، ورأيهم في السجن.کما أن البعض منهم قد تحدث عن ضيق السجن وسوء أخلاق المسجونين، وعن الصعوبات والألم الناتج عن التعذيب داخل السجن، وعن الظلمة والتلوث وسوء التغذية ، واستواء الليل بالنهار، والحرارة والبرودة وعن العجز والضعف والظلم والوحدة وغدر الأصدقاء وغيرها.أما في الشعر الحديث والمعاصر فبالإضافة لهذه المضامين السابقة وجدت مضامين حديثة کالحديث عن ( الحرية، الديمقراطية، المساواة، حب الوطن ومقاومة الاستعمار ..الخ). وهناک تشابه کبير بين مضمون هذه الأشعار قديما وحديثا في العربية والفارسية؛ بسبب تشابه الظروف السياسية والاجتماعية العامة . يهدف هذا البحث إلى إلقاء الضوء على أهم مضامين شعر الحبسيات في اللغتين العربية والفارسية وأوجه الشبه والاختلاف بينهما في الشعر الحديث والمعاصر. انتهج البحث المنهج التحليلي الوصفي المقارن. that grew up during captivity or imprisonment. Where some of the poets who tasted the bitterness of imprisonment or imprisonment included their poems part in the name of Habsiat, which are the verses in which the poet expresses his spiritual and physical conditions in prison, they were born in special circumstances, and they were associated with a bitter experience, which is the experience of imprisonment with all the connotations of prevention And the oppression and the blockade, which are the poems smuggled behind the restrictions

Poezia ca parte a rezistenţei prin cultură în spaţiul concentraţionar comunist din România

This study is the first part of a larger research project, which aims to study poetry as a form of cultural and spiritual resistance in the system of political prisons of communist Romania. However, the phenomenon of detention poetry did not begin in communist prisons, but is well attested before 1945. The author investigates these poetic manifestations and focuses his research on the detainees who were arrested during the Antonescu years and stayed in prison after 1945. They proved to be a bridge between pre-communist and communist prison poetry.

Poesía carcelaria, repertorio poético y subjetividades en conflicto: el poemario Alde erantzira nabil de Ekhiñe Eizagirre

Prison poetry has had a considerable impact in the Basque literary field ever sincethe well-known poet Joseba Sarrionandia published Kartzelako poemak [Poems from the jail] (Susa, 1992) during his imprisonment. Since that literary milestone, several prison poetry books have been published both by publishing companies and by alternative platforms.; However, it was not until 2016, when Ekhine Eizagirre published Alde erantzira nabil [I walk upside down], that the first prison poetry book by a female author was published. In this article, the poetry collection by Ekhine Eizagirre is analyzed through a comparison with the symbols and imagery from previous examples of prison poetry. The analysis shows how she innovated this collectively produced imagery from a feminist perspective and from within the community. To this end, this paper analyses the gender discourses and opinions of the imprisoned subjects, and reflects on the position of these poetic repertoires in the Basque literary field.

Die leser in Breyten Breytenbach se tronkpoësie

Breyten Breytenbach is the most important prison writer in the Afrikaans literary tradition. This article briefly places his prison writing against the background of national and international prison writing before going on to investigate the way in which the reader is represented in his Afrikaans prison poetry. Research about prison writing points out the importance of communication with the outside world for the prisoner. To the prisoner who is also a creative writer, writing is one of the most important means of establishing contact with the outside world. Amongst the large number of poems in Breytenbach’s body of prison poetry which depict an attempt to communicate with the outside world, there are several in which the addressee is explicitly referred to as the reader. The focus of this investigation thus falls on that which reception aesthetics refer to as a”text-internal reader” or “explicit reader”, directly or indirectly addressed in the text. The investigation shows that the poet-narrator in Breytenbach’s prison poems is very conscious of the reader’s role in the concretization of the poem. Several poems from Breytenbach’s body of prison poetry, collected in the anthology Die ongedanste dans (“The undanced dance”, 2005), are analysed to show different facets of the poetnarrator’s relationship with the reader. Some of these analyses describe the poet-narrator’s circumspect approach to the reader and the explanations and instructions given to the reader. Other analyses focus on the poet-narrator’s attempts to manipulate references to time in order to create the illusion of simultaneity with the reader. Further analyses show that the prison writer’s emphasis on the anonymity and absence of the reader can be related to philosophical representations of signification while at the same time being grounded in the material circumstances of Breytenbach’s imprisonment. It is also shown that some of the poems depict the reader as being complicit in creating the circumstances in which the prison poet finds himself.

“Labyrinth of loneliness”: Breyten Breytenbach’s prison poetry (1976–1985)

Breytenbach’s prison poetry is first contextualized as part of a South African subgenre that flourished under apartheid, and then interrogated for its specificities: the singular prison conditions under which he wrote, the nature of the poetry, specific leitmotifs in each of the five volumes published between 1976 and 1985. A psychoanalytic approach is indicated to this strong middle phase in his extensive poetical oeuvre, comprising seventeen collections of poetry.

The Humans that We Are: Prison Poetry Tour Narrative (Part 2)

ABSTRACTCaits Meissner continues sharing from her reimagined book tour, where she brings poetry workshops and collaborative readings to prisons, jails and reentry programs around the country.

The Humans That We Are: Prison Poetry Tour Narrative

ABSTRACTPoet Caits Meissner shares her reimagined book tour, bringing free writing and collaborative reading workshops to spaces of incarceration around the country.

“What Is There In My Speaking”: Re-Explorations of Language in Abdilatif Abdalla's Anthology of Prison Poetry, <em>Sauti Ya Dhiki</em>

This paper undertakes an aesthetic reading of Abdilatif Abdalla’s anthology of his prison poetry, Sauti ya Dhiki [Voice of Agony]. While his poetry has been repeatedly analyzed as a form of critical discourse, its poetic angle has so far been rather neglected. Instead of presenting a catalogue of stylistic features, this article aims to show that in his poetry “meaning” emerges not beyond but out of poetic form. Concentrating on the centrality of language, the prosodic pattern, as well as the use of topoi in his poetry, it questions the concept of poetry as giving form to an underlying idea. Poetry does not merely “translate” political ideas or prison experience into poetic form; rather, poetic form and language shape the production of thoughts, if not the whole experience of prison. Conceptually, I refer to notions like “cultural figuration” as well as Michael Taussig’s concept of mimesis that seek to go beyond a dichotomy of form and content to highlight the thought-inspiring force of language that has taken form.

Wearing the Belt of Oppression: Khāqāni’s Christian Qasida and the Prison Poetry of Medieval Shirvān

This article examines how the Persian prison poem (habsiyāt) incorporated Islamic legal norms for governing non-Muslim peoples into its poetics. By tracing how Khāqāni of Shirvān (d. 1199) brought the aesthetics of incarceration to bear on Islamic legal regulations pertaining to non-Muslim communities (ahl al-zemma), I offer a new perspective on the politics of poetry in Persian culture. As I delineate the intertextual references to legal stipulations (shorut) pertaining to non-Muslims that suffuse Khāqāni’s Christianqasida, I demonstrate how the Persian poetics of incarceration coalesced into a powerful internal critique of Islamic law.

Prison ecopoetics: concrete, imagined, and textual spaces in American inmate poetry

Bell Gale Chevigny writes, in prison ‘[n]ature is the more valued for its scarcity’, yet very little work has been done on the ways inmates engage with environments. Continually confronted by a lack of multidimensional environmental experiences, the prisoner is more aware and more conscious of the complex and often invisible ways in which environments manifest themselves. As such, I contend that there is an ecopoetics of prison poetry that results from the inmate’s hyper-awareness of environmental encounter and the various forms in which that can arrive. By acknowledging and embracing this new forum for ecopoetic studies, we not only become more conscious of the ways in which American inmates respond and express their confinement but also uncover the disconnections between traditional ideas of nature and ecopoetics. This article will consider a variety of anthologised prison poets and the ways in which they engage with ecopoetics.

The Pen of the Panther: Barriers and Freedom in the Prison Poetry of Ericka Huggins

The Pen of the Panther: Barriers and Freedom in the Prison Poetry of Ericka Huggins