March 27, 2017 - 00:17
This week I spent the majority of the session at the Praxis site making a spreadsheet and trying to create an organized chart of all the poets we want to feature in the poetry book. S sent me a list of people we have contact information for and a link for locating incarcerated people in Pennsylvania. After spending over an hour putting every person into the chart, I found myself frustrated as I tried to find information on where they are now or how to contact them. On the chart, I labelled anyone I couldn't find information on through the list S sent me with N/A, and I felt a frustrating desperation as I found myself repeating person after person with "N/A". The website S sent me for locating incarcerated people was a surprise to me. I hadn't ever thought of the idea of a website to help track incarcerated inmates as they get moved around from prison to prison.
In order to find a person through the website, you have a variety of options for the information you use to search them up. You can search with name, gender, race, inmate number, citizenship, and approximate age. Even with this website, however, I ended up unable to locate a large number of people on the list. How am I supposed to find the contact information of all these people when all I know is their name, some times only the first name, and their writing?
For about the last half hour of our time there, I began the process of typing of the writing from the workshop we led last Saturday. I was extremely touched when S showed us the end of workshop responses that they had written and found nothing but positivity and heartfelt appreciation for all of us. I can only describe it as, it felt good. It felt really good and I was really proud of us for thinking of and creating the workshop. I had hoped that we would help provide a break from the usual workshops the organization leads and give them something different and fun. I think we achieved our goal. I keep thinking about the experience and I'm excited to go back and finish the workshop.