When prison doors swing open, these mentors open their arms
Craig Watson only showed up at that poetry workshop back in 2015 because his prison compound’s championship basketball game was canceled. “I was just sitting there, like, ‘I don’t write poems. I don’t rhyme,’” he recalls, chuckling.
The facilitator from Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop told him to forget about rhyming and just express himself. The blank page in front of him began to fill up. Poetry offered an outlet for expressing difficult feelings about a childhood marked by violence. During community “write nights,” Free Minds members gave him positive feedback, and he began to lean into that network of support.
Free Minds, founded in 2002, operates book clubs and writing workshops in
A listening ear“Just rewarding”
