Tucson, Arizona. November 15, 2017— The University of Arizona Poetry Center, part of the College of Humanities, has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Art for Justice Fund. The grant will fund a three-year project that will commission new work from leading writers in conversation with the crisis of mass incarceration in the United States, with the goal of creating new awareness and empathy through presentation and publication.  In particular, through the work of leading poets, the project will seek to confront racial inequities within the criminal justice system to promote social justice and change.   

 

The Poetry Center will carry out the project in partnership with Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet, lawyer, and public intellectual who writes and lectures on mass incarceration and American society, and who visited Tucson and read at the Poetry Center in September 2017.  Over the three years of funding, the project will:

• commission and present new work in the Reading & Lecture series at the University of Arizona, in conversation will local organizations working for change in the criminal justice system;
• commission found-text poems and responses created from the language of representative federal and state legislation that has disproportionately affected people of color;
• seek to publish works created through the above commissions in leading publication venues through publishing partnerships;
• create a single-source archive for all new works on the Poetry Center’s website, including interactive platforms to encourage public participation in the found-text project.

 

The Art for Justice Fund, launched earlier this year with a $100 million donation from philanthropist Agnes Gund, today announced the first round of grant recipients in the areas of criminal justice reform and the arts. With awards ranging from $100,000 to $7.5 million, a total of $22 million was awarded to 30 innovative programs that seek to safely reduce prison populations, strengthen education and employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated people, and humanize people affected by the criminal justice system.

 

The Art for Justice Fund, created by Ms. Gund in partnership with the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, is a five-year initiative that uniquely connects the ingenuity of criminal justice advocates and the creativity of artists to address the crisis of mass incarceration in America.

 

“The Art for Justice Fund invests in organizations and artists doing critical work to advance criminal justice reform,” said Helena Huang, project director for the Art for Justice Fund. “Over the next five years, we aim to reduce our country’s harmful reliance on prisons and jails, and instead to increase community investments in health and public safety.”

 

The Poetry Center has a long history serving system-involved writers, and has administered the Arizona Prison Writing Program led by writers Richard Shelton, Ken Lamberton, and Erec Toso for many years.  Recently, the Poetry Center has begun serving writers incarcerated in area juvenile detention centers with poetry readings from visiting poets and with writing residencies through the Poetry Center’s Writing the Community program.  “We are so excited to leverage this support from the Art for Justice Fund to expand the conversation about the role incarceration plays in American life.  We’re grateful to the Fund for believing in the powerful role poetry can play as an agent for conversation and change,” said Tyler Meier, Executive Director of the Poetry Center.

 

Reginald Dwayne Betts said of the project, “This is an exciting opportunity to not only bring poets to the Arizona community who have been socially engaged while writing at the highest levels - but also to play a role in making that poetry truly exist as a part of larger and more public conversations around social justice in the United States.”

 

Click here to learn more about the Art for Justice fund. 

 

The University of Arizona Poetry Center, part of the UA College of Humanities, is housed in one of three landmark buildings for poetry in the nation.  In addition to its world-renowned collection of contemporary poetry, the Poetry Center is known for its long running readings and lecture series, international symposia, classes and workshops, writers’ residencies, and a wide range of programs for children and youth. For more information, please visit poetry.arizona.edu or call (520) 626-3765.

 

The University of Arizona Poetry Center is part of a national coalition of poetry organizations working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. Learn more about this coalition of organizations.