Judge Joseph Dever, center, featured with me and our Changing Lives Through Literature class

My dear friend and colleague, Judge Joseph Dever, is in hospice care at home and not expected to live past the weekend. I have never eulogized someone before their death, but Joe and I often joked that he was essentially “my second husband,” and I know he needs to feel my words sent into the world at a time when he is dying.

I worked with Joe beginning in 1992 when together we started the Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) program for women. We were inspired by Judge Robert Kane and Professor Robert Waxler who began the program for men in the southern part of Massachusetts. They aimed for an opportunity to help people get out of the cycle of crime by offering them a literature intervention, so to speak. We wanted to give it a shot with women, and so for nearly twenty-three years, Judge D, as I called him in our classes, trooped from Lynn to Lowell every other Tuesday evening for CLTL at Middlesex Community College where we held classes, most often in the president’s office. For twenty-three years, he joyfully climbed into a van with the women and a Lynn probation officer, and rode more than thirty miles to and from the college, because he believed so strongly in this program

I have written many times about CLTL, notably here, but for those who don’t know, the program brings those sentenced by the court to probation into a college literature seminar. It is a very unique collaboration between the courts and education, and while “changing lives” is a large claim, it certainly helps pave the road to new attitudes, abilities, understandings, and intentions—for all the participants. Simply put, probationers, probation officers, judges, and professors sit in a classroom together and discuss books. I call it a “democratic classroom” because all opinions about literature are on equal footing. It’s been called everything from “Books for Crooks” to a program where they “Throw the Book at Them.” Judge Dever always called it “the joy of my judgeship.”

Joe Dever was Boston born and graduated from Boston University School of Law in 1960. He was first a dedicated public defender, something he prided fiercely, and he always told me, “in no uncertain terms:”  There are no better public defender programs in any part of the country than in Massachusetts. He loved the law passionately, almost as much as he loved his family. Joe and his wife Anne (who always organized and appreciated Joe’s lofty spirit) raised a family of public servants. They inspired their four children to fight for the good of others. They relished humor, and they loved their home in Marblehead. A loyal and generous soul, Joe spent many mornings with buddies from his town, eating breakfast, discussing the day, admonishing the Red Sox, and critiquing all decisions made by those in public office.

But Joe knew the law was a foundation for him. Once when I was called for jury duty, Joe told me he hoped very much that I’d make the cut. “Nothing teaches you more about being a citizen than being on a jury,” he said.

Like his uncles, Governor of Massachusetts, Paul A. Dever, and Ted Dever, the presiding justice at Cambridge District Court, Joe yearned to make a difference. He was appointed a judgeship in 1987 by Governor Michael S. Dukakis. He was eventually appointed presiding justice in the Lynn District Court and held that position for more than 10 years.

A 2005 Boston.com article written by Kathy McCabe about Judge D. when he retired from the bench at age 70 (as is required by law) quoted him as saying “My mother believed very much in the dramatic arts.” That is another thing Joe and I shared, a love for the spoken word. After my book Shakespeare Behind Bars came out, Joe stood on the bench in his robes at our graduation ceremony and read from my book to a packed Lynn District Court, quoting me and quoting Shakespeare.

There was no one who could read like Joe. Every semester at the beginning of our CLTL class, Joe read the poem I have on my syllabus from Barbara Helfgott Hyett’s book, In Evidence. Helfgott-Hyett interviewed veterans, soldiers who served in WW II, to create her Holocaust poetry, and after the reading, the class discussed what one has to know in order to understand this poem—what words, phrases, ideas.  Joe’s voice always rang out with the same kind of pain and joy that he contained in all his conversation. A sonorous voice filled with the kind of wisdom and understanding of a life well lived, a life that indeed filled a room.

At the University Theatre
in Harvard Square, I went
to see The True Glory and
I was still in uniform.
When they showed the films
of Dachau, the woman who sat
beside me said, “That’s a lie.”
I was rugged in those days.
I just couldn’t take it.
I said, “Lady I’ve been there.
I still smell the stench.”
And I said it loud and all
the people heard.

Joe’s life was a tribute to language. He lived with dignity, joy, a gratitude for all that he had, and the knowledge that he did change people’s lives. He will be sorely missed by the world. I am proud to say I shared so much of my work with Joe Dever, and to Joe, I say yes, “all the people heard.”

There’s a long tradition of people writing poetry behind bars. Besides letters, poems are the written communication used most by prisoners to reach out to others or to communicate with deeper parts of oneself. Some of my favorite prison poets include Ethridge Knight and Jimmy Santiago Baca. But imagine my surprise when my niece who spent not quite a year in a Texas jail sent me three poems from her time behind bars. And she sent them as they were written in a notebook.

It’s touching to see how she felt like she had a “scarlet letter” even after a year, how she knew what lay ahead was terrifying, and how there was nothing but warehousing going on for her drug habit.

While she’s in her 20’s, she has the wisdom to see how she’s been silenced and has had rights taken away. But what I find profound, is that she also is aware how easy it is to lose hope and motivation–even with a first offense.

But perhaps my favorite of her poems is this one. She realizes what heroin has done to her young life. “I’ve been locked behind bars and time has been murdered.”

This is not a new story but it is one we need to pay attention to. Yes, she needed treatment, but jail gave her a kind of death. Now, out in the world, she pays a few hundred dollars a month for probation, drug testing, and the “privilege” of wearing an ankle bracelet.She writes that the costs are broken down like so:

“$65/month for probation fees
$182/month for ankle monitor
$10 per drug test at random
$1400 for SMART residential “treatment” program (jail rehab)
$260 for aftercare
And there’s probably some other court costs and what not
that I can’t even remember at the moment.”

She must take a long bus ride for testing several times a week, and she stays home nights. She still has no real treatment follow-up program to what she went through in jail. Luckily, she has some family standing behind her and has found a place to live, and a few friends to share her world with. But she has no job.

This is reentry in the United States.

“Book Stew” – Episode 22 from Wilmington TV on Vimeo.

Thanks to Eileen MacDougall, the creator and host of “Book Stew,” the WCTV monthly book blast for readers and writers. I talk here about Shakespeare Behind Bars and the prison system today.

Antoine Hunter (below), Travis Santell Rowland, Rashad Pridgen, and Matthew Wickett (above, left to right)

A dance performance at Harvard Law School on Friday showed that art is one of our most powerful ways to fight for justice. See my new post online about the Zaccho Dance Troupe and their spectacular Dying While Black and Brown at

I’m excited that West Virginia University is starting a  book group that seems based, in part on Changing Lives Through Literature. I have written about CLTL here and there’s info on my blog about it as well. When I went to a conference last year in West Virginia, I talked about CLTL and lo and behold, I think it helped Katy Ryan get this group going, although she had been doing great things already with literature and writing behind bars.

This is a press release from WVA. I forgive them the use of the word, “inmate.” For more info, contact: Devon Copeland, Devon.Copeland@mail.wvu.edu _______________________________________________________________

For the past 10 years, community and West Virginia University nonprofit organization the Appalachian Prison Book Project has helped imprisoned people discover the transformative power of reading.

The project began in 2004 after Katy Ryan, associate professor of English at WVU, realized the state did not have any prison book projects.

The group has received more than 20,000 letters from imprisoned people expressing how needed — and essential — reading is. Books have been shipped to men and women in West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Now, the program is starting its next chapter – a prison book club in the secure female facility at the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.

The idea for the book club grew from a discussion at last spring’s Educational Justice and Appalachian Prisons Symposium, an event co-sponsored by the Appalachian Prison Book Project. Longtime members of the project Cari Carpenter, Elizabeth Juckett and Katy Ryan are facilitating the book club.

“Prisons are built to isolate and to separate. They stand as formidable barriers between those inside and those outside. Books can lessen that isolation,” said Ryan, founder of the Appalachian Prison Book Project. “Malcolm X wrote that reading in prison changed forever the course of his life. ‘It awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.’ We all need that intellectual and creative stimulation, and people in prison have fewer opportunities for it.”

Through reading and discussion of selected works, the group hopes to strengthen members’ analytical and communication skills, and build positive peer support and vital connections between people inside and outside prisons.

It can also foster relationships and help mend those affected by incarceration.

“One woman told us that after reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, she wanted to reach out to her son. He is going through a hard time, and she hadn’t been able to find a way to connect with him. She had not felt comfortable writing to him, but the book helped her find a way to start,” Ryan said. “She wrote her son a letter. Then they talked on the phone for the first time in seven months.

For others, it can simply be a more personal feeling.

“Several (prisoners) have talked about how a book has stayed with them and given them a new perspective or strength,” Ryan said. “The importance of reading and access to an education while inside prison certainly extends to life outside prison. Studies repeatedly conclude that those with a higher education do better once released than those without. But learning also matters while people are still in prison. Their lives, their health, their relationships, their mental faculties are not on hold. Books—and especially being able to talk with others about books—can be a real resource for living, for figuring things out.”

Every other week the book club works on creative writing. The 14-member group writes short essays and poems, reading them to one another.

“We want the book club to be flexible and responsive to the needs and ideas of participants,” Ryan said. “The women are highly motivated and dedicated to their education and growth. It’s a phenomenal group.”

Though it always accepts donations for postage, supplies and other books (including dictionaries), the group is currently seeking donations of the following titles for the book club. All donated items must be paperback.

There Are No Children Here, by Alex Koltowitz

A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest Gaines

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Discussions in the club have been fantastic and reaction to the group has been positive, Ryan said.

“Staff members (at the prison) have reached out to let me know that the women are really excited about the program and are talking about the books as they are reading them. And we know that other women are already interested in joining the next group. There is a lot of momentum.

The group says studies show rates of repeat offenses drop when inmates are given access to such materials while inside. The power of the written word, Ryan said, has the ability to change and transform.

“We often describe books as an ‘escape’ or ‘transporting’ — they move us — and yet they return us to ourselves and our moment,” she said. “The right book at the right time can adjust, even alter, the way that we think about life and the world.”