Welcome to. The free library of philadelphia. My name is Jason Freeman and its my great honor to be here tonight to introduce Reginald Dwayne. Thats referred to by the new york book review as a powerful work of lyric, art and de force indictment of the carceral industrial state. Reginald dwayne betts is poetry collection felon won the acp image award, the american book award and was finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times book prize. Also the author of two other poetry collections and a memoir he received the 2019 National Magazine award for his New York Times magazine essay about his journey from prison inmate to becoming a of wales yale school and an attorney. His other honors include a guggenheim fellowship, a 2021 macarthur genius grant, and a radcliffe fellowship from harvard. Hes the founder executive director of freedom reads a non not for Profit Institution devoted to greater access to literature in prison. Dwayne joins us tonight with his latest redaction created in collaboration with visual. Visual artist titus capper. Redaction is a multimedia examination of the relationship between and incarceration in america, specifically addressing the issue of cash bail referred to by its authors as a journey through words and images meant to trouble. One review calls it a brilliant and original condemnation of racial injustice. Tonight, hell be joined in conversation by era dee mathews. She. She is the 2223 philadelphia poet laureate and directs the Poetry Program at bryn mawr college. Her collection and similar to the 2016 yale series of younger poets prize and her work has appeared in the New York Times best american poets gulf coast, Harvard Review and v. Q. A. Among other journals. Her autobiographical poetry collection, bread and circus, will be published this spring. Philly put your hands together and join me in welcoming tonights guests. Its good to see everybody. Welcome, everybody, and welcome our guests, Reginald Dwayne betts. We have the opportunity to have a conversation tonight. We just realized that we go way. We first met in without knowing that we were meeting each other in 2008 in detroit, where im technically or what i own as my hometown. It was my first poetry reading. It was your first poetry reading. And it was well, less people than tonight. But then we went to dinner afterwards. It was all worth it. Yeah. So welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank for making thank you for this book. I thought wed have a little bit of a conversation about book tonight and how this beauty started. Cool. So its a pleasure. Yes. To get the book. You got to show and tell. But this would be like like when you would go to read when you were a kid and, they would show you pictures because these pictures. So ill get to show you some pictures. Exactly. Tell us a little bit how this collaboration started. How did you meet titus . How did it all start . Its interesting, actually, because its the way that we met, but then its maybe the our first artistic collaboration happened before we met. So i was commissioned by the architecture and like Design Magazine to write a piece and i thought it was strange because i didnt know that they wrote pieces and in a Design Magazine. But i wrote a piece about it was essay is actually in this is a short essay about carrying letters and is a guy who got executed in 2000 he was one of the last to be executed for a crime he committed as teenager and and i was writing something and it was about him but the piece ended up not being good really. But point is, i spent the whole semester carrying those letters around. And so when i was asked to a piece, i wrote a short piece about, the letters. And this guy, glenn titus, was asked, contribute some art. And so he contributed a of pieces that are redaction pieces. I dont know the redaction pieces, but im jerome series pieces. So years later, after did redaction together i mean his and i was like oh yeah i got that magazine. Im pretty sure many. He was like, yeah, me too. What did you do . I was like, i cant remember because. And it was one of those magazines designed with plastic. So i dont even know if i open my and i was like, what are you in there for . Hes like, i cant remember the actually do something. So we take the plastic off and we open the book up and they appeared all pieces this piece was like the intro to my piece and so thats our first artist collaboration, even though we didnt even know other at the time. And im glad we didnt discovered into after we Work Together because we probably would have chosen like not Work Together because we felt like it was somebody elses idea. Its like so think we should Work Together. But anyway, years later, we were and we would talk about artists and artistic collaborations with visual artists and people who deal with work, but biggest challenge is always, how do you make the the words not be a substrate, the visual art or art not be a substrate for the words. And so we just kicked it back and forth, but we never thought about doing something. And it just so happens that i was tapping into working around redaction, which is for me thinking about how can you make a text more revelatory by getting rid of the words that are superfluous. Getting rid of the words to get in a way to meaning. And also, i was thinking, how do you turn complaint a literally, you know, civil is a complaint. I thought, how do you turn it into the poetic version of a complaint . And so i was trying to use redaction lines to reveal this. And id say this had always worked visually the with the like doubling of images with with the recognition you could reveal more by making people want to slow with the taking a glimpse into whats behind the thing that you typically see. And so he invited me to this to this college on main. He was in the print shop, so he was trying something new and i was trying to set something and it just ended up working, working. And then came this beauty eventually. And you said that its been in a couple of different. So youve had this displayed and its been exhibited. U. S. Museums, art galleries. My house. Your house. Yeah. So what happened first is, is, was in moma ps1. So its not its i mean, this is a lot of people here, so dont shout at once though. But but who was actually seen the book . So its only one person. So its hard to have a conversation about a about an art object and talk about it in abstract. And you cant actually see it. Whos familiar with a print . What a print is. Now, i wasnt familiar with what a print was, and so it was a learning process for me. And i learned a lot when we we were working on this. Titus is doing etchings and i wont ask you whos familiar with the etching is ill just say it it is its like drawing on piece of sheer plastic with a really sharp pencil and like sharp blade. And then later what you do is you. You wipe the plate with ink and then the ink settles into the crevices, and then you put it down on a sheet of paper and you use some one of those things that you flattened. So it. But this one has like 300 pieces, something, but you basically transfer the lines from the from the plate to the page. And its really lovely because you can get these these really detailed work and typically they dont they dont do etchings on black paper and they dont do prints on black people. So it means i just decided to use black paper. We did two etchings and then we did two silkscreens one silkscreen, which just the words and one silkscreen was just a lattice. And we turned these into prints and we had an exhibit at moma ps1 and we had a separate exhibit and haven and we call this the third exhibit ever redaction. And ill tell you why in a second but the thing that you see when you grab the book is that its of three redaction sections. They have all of the redaction pieces from show the first page, the first four pages allow you to just how that their printmaking that is talked about gets deconstructed. So right now this is like the whole point. And then you take page away and, you see two words and, then you take the next page and see you see the words and you can see the face behind it. You take the next page and you see one face and then you turn the next page away and you see two the last face. And then when you turn the next page. You how the four pages come together to one print. And one of the things we were struggling with is and its on a on a wall is bigger than this. And everybody doesnt have wall space for this. Like 30 by 25 inch print. But to consume the whole thing is 50 prints, a lot of prints. The sort of number in addition is less we wanted to do 50 because we started with the idea of these poems. And so the poems collectively were like 20 some pages and then we just had some other things that we built into the show as well. But what you also see when you get the book is that like you dont see my name at the bottom, you dont see taylors name at the bottom. And then when you turn a page, its not an image on the other side because know we conceptualize this book as a work of art. And so each had a redaction and prints is a redaction print, you know, and with the notion that some people would deconstruct it and they will frame it and they will frame multiple copies. Some people will buy copies and they will just hold one as a work in and of itself. And then they would think about the other one as something that they deconstructed give out to friends. Because, you know, one of the things the whole work was premised on is this notion that you have a show and is at moma ps1 and amazing but only people who know about it being at moma can go see it and if they are in another state and they even if they do know about it, they might not be able get there. But when you turn it into a book like this and when you try to make attention to the details, like having three different kinds of paper, im like having it be closed down that. Is it is a it is your opportunity to experience that third exhibition but a redaction brings exactly and Something Interesting about the soft bound that it can go inside so you can take a soft book or you cant take a hardbound book inside. And so it feels like its an important part of this because its telling a story thats relevant for people who are inside or who are incarcerated and then youve made it accessible for. Those folks as well were the first two readings i read from it have been in prisons in new york. And at the last time i was reading, you know, i was telling story about why it was so about an idea that, you know, we didnt want to create this beautiful thing because typically art books and coffee table books like typically they dont have art in it. I mean, they dont have poetry in it. So theyre not as good as this one. Poetry makes everything. They. But everything also is that know it does really just live on the on on on a table often i like to think that this makes you want to pick it up and look at it. But i also think it becomes Something Different because each one of the pieces, the redaction prints, each poem is like a haiku so its not as if you got to read all it at once. And its just so many different places to step into with it. So absolutely, i thinking about going back to when we were first introduced and i was thinking about when i had a private introduction to your full length work, which with shahid reads his own poem and as with all of your work in my view there a refusal to allow the disappearance of the or the formerly incarcerated. And so the idea that you move into redaction seems layer that even more where theres this idea where theres a refusal to let these people be disappeared is a refusal to let these demands be disappear it in some way. And in fact the beginning epigraph to redaction reads a journey through words and images meant to trouble a poet and a painter refuse to let them black hold the process. And then as we move through the collection to page 149, i was wondering if youd be in reading that. One 4908 notice which is cool red ribbon is that you can use to save your marker. This is like the bible. You. Forget americas stories, then behold this process. How we avoid letting anyone pigeonhole this process. My god, was oh, the weapons done . Whos believes art will console this process in museums only to guys looked like his kin while . We kaphar let the market control this process. My brother say you your man mastered the hustle. I told him only our sweat were bankroll with this process mature you tore and regret what others forget a knife against canvas ready to charcoal this process maybe its the tension between the world and me should i reveal this black soul this process is our journey the and images meant the trouble. Charlotte and titus refuse to them black hole this. How does the work clear the path for people to see what they refuse to confront . Well, you know, its interesting, too, because i in some very real ways, a lot of my is about prison, but a lot of my work is about prison in a way, that prison is a metaphor for what it means to be alive in the world and and when you when you talk about what this book is about and what the work is about and how i worked in that people become invisible, that i feel like, i sometimes disappear by the system. I mean part it is i think this book is a story of family. I think this book is a story community. And i think one of the ways that we dont understand is as a story family, we like to believe that. We understand it as a story of injustice. And i think that is true but as a story of injustice. It gets to exist as a thing that actually doesnt shift considerably. So we talked about 2000 in between year 2000. Now its been radical change in public consciousness about the system, but it hasnt been real radical change in the system itself and not as much as we need or we might demand. And i think part of that is we dont think of our folks lives as whole. We think about lives as just a sliver of of some kind of injustice that impossible to truly, truly. And so when we think about it, dont think about the stories of people. And i think thats what i try to do with this book is is all of the poems is about community. Its about family is about dealing with disaster. And even the redaction poems are often telling stories that people dont. This was a 38 year old mother, two. This was a 50 year old disabled man. He lived with his children, you know, and its telling the story of of that that life that actually gets erased sometimes when we when we think about the system. Yeah and when you think about this system, you cant help but think about time. And so i was really curious about the ways that youve mark time in the book itself so the book opens with the first section titled archive in which you entered the conversation discussing the 3 5 compromise in the constitution and then a page later you enter into the letters from Glenn Mcginnis, who you referenced earlier, who was executed in january of 2000. And for me, that time, marker signals, the beginning of a nation and the end of the human. So im wondering how, you want and i was hoping that you might that short essay about glenn and second i was hoping that you might be able to answer some of the questions about you, how you document time it feels like you enter into the text and it feels as if no time has passed but you know that time has how you documenting time as a series of really good questions none of which i thought. When i was writing this book. Thats exactly the thing i was thinking about before. As i said, as i said, i said, i have no interest in knowing your questions before such a mistake. Actually, you one of the things thats beautiful about this is this constant juxtapositions, juxtapositions that happen. So as both poem with art, but as poems with each other and you really took a two poem arc to Say Something about time. And in a way it makes all the sense in the world because you go from christmas addicts to Glenn Mcginnis and, you talking about the passage of hundreds of years and it frames this ultimate question im trying to deal with what is the story of incarceration is this story of incarceration . And through line from, you know, colonial oppression to the Death Penalty . Is it is it is that what the through line is or is it more complicated than that . And if we say that thats the through line, do we do we leave out are we missing something . Redaction tries to answer that question, but it tries to answer it with words in art. So im a read both of these just because i want to read this and just drop where i got this line from. If you know this line comes from but youve got to know the allusion i cant tell you what illusion is. You got to hear it and be like, i know what this is. Its like if you hear somebody, i got debts. No honest man could pay. Who said that . I dont know who that i got debts. No honest man can pay. Said it twice. One album, bruce springsteen. Thank you. So right im a read these two far im a reader christmas addicts one and this is the art that goes with the christmas addicts bone. And christmas addicts to date as vacant as a confederate empty as some of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and every tomorrow somehow its own chronicle each spill lovely and devastating than the last and tell me the story too as a some day man refusing to be a witness and oh lord, this democracy this becoming these amendments that metamorph to kafkas pet some euphemism for longing for a death, for loss, for suffering 3 5 the whole person 3 5 and indians may be excluded from this Union Perspective of members. A portion or 3 5 indians 3 5 not free persons, not free bound to service. And crispus, whose body blair for this democracy becomes jeopardy. Question and oh lord, this democracy this war gathering, not india, but mohegan, mojave manhattan is a not be word not 3 5 and abundance in history and crispus court a bully with his patriotism his dead body count of first as if being counted is a prerequisite to freedom for this america in his graveyards of naming. Now if you get the allusion, you get a free book and this book aint that expensive but is more expensive than i will give you for free. Is so bad though like when you still dont have a post line and people dont get it because because you did this cool thing like like match your shoestrings to your shirt and nobody knew it. You and its like, man. And then if they like the line you feel even more guilty because you like my name, even like me for me, you know, they like me for this person. But ill tell because this is a good friend of mine. The line is from natalie diaz. It