—Martín Espada
Artists incarcerated in prisons have frequently told me that making art was like encountering an unlocked door—art provided a momentary way out from the confines of state control. During long days, where tedious rules organize life and boredom is punishing, artists were able to scratch out a line or mix a color that could breathe a little air into the small cells that lock up so many people across this nation at shameful rates. Making art doesn’t necessarily change the material conditions of prison, but it can change psychic ones. Art gives the artist another language, another tool to fight for freedom. For the first time in fifteen years of working with artists in Illinois prisons, I have started to hear a different story, one of despair and fatigue. With COVID-19 raging in congregate living spaces, of which prisons are prime hot spots, artists, poets, and, indeed, all people locked behind fences and walls are on the edge. In many prisons, people have been on constant lockdown for more than six months, stuck in a six-by-eight-foot cell with another person for twenty-three to twenty-four hours a day. Those filing petitions for clemency and writing to state governors aim for an urgent priority—the hope of escaping premature death. The stress of living in a box can only ever exceed its tight boundaries.