When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems & Journal Conversations

Join the Sing Sing Prison Museum, in partnership with the Ossining Public Library, to celebrate National Poetry Month. The event will take place on Thursday, April 18th from 6:30-8:30 pm in the Burdarz Theater. Dr. Celes Tisdale and  Mark Nowak will be in conversation about the role poetry played in the prison reforms of the 1970s. 

This event is recommended for audiences 12 years and up. Registration is preferred but walk-ins are welcome.

Dr. Tisdale was the first African American to teach a poetry class in an American prison. He began this work a year after the Attica uprising in 1971. Recently, Nowak discovered a book published by Dr. Tisdale in 1974, filled with poetry written during the class and Tisdale’s journal about teaching the class. The book was out of print, but Nowak recognized the significance of the text and shared it with Duke University Press, leading to its republication in 2022. 

This illuminating conversation will delve into Dr. Tisdale's personal experiences, prison conditions at Attica and in NY State during that time, and why these writings and reflections are still relevant today. Join us to celebrate National Poetry Month and learn more about the important role poetry played in prison reform during the 1970s.

The event will feature scholars, three students from Ossining High School, and three previously incarcerated individuals from Sing Sing Correctional who studied poetry through Rehabilitation Through the Arts. Each of them will read a poem from "When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal", which explores the themes of freedom and oppression, as well as the humanity of those in the carceral system.

For more information and to register, visit the Ossining Public Library calendar Month Calendar | Ossining Public Library (librarycalendar.com). For more information about the Sing Sing Prison Museum visit www.singsingprisonmuseum.org

SSPM Mission: Sing Sing Prison Museum shares stories of incarceration and reform, past and present, and brings people together to imagine and create a more just society.​

Celes Tisdale is distinguished emeritus professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo and editor of Betcha Ain’t: Poems from Attica (1974), We Be Poetin’ (1974), and When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke University Press, 2022). Professor Tisdale is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English having received the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and he has taught at several colleges and universities and read his poetry and lectured throughout the United States and Canada.  Professor Tisdale’s many invitations to discuss carceral concerns include the School of Law at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and PEN America in Manhattan, New York. He joins us from Georgia for this program.

Mark Nowak’s books include Shut Up Shut Down, Coal Mountain Elementary, Social Poetics, and …AGAIN (forthcoming), all from Coffee House Press. He recently edited Coronavirus Haiku (Kenning Editions,2021), guest-edited the “Why We Write” issue of Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 2021), and wrote an introduction to Celes Tisdale’s When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke UniversityPress, 2022). A native of Buffalo, Nowak is founding director of the Worker Writers School (https://www.instagram.com/workerwritersschool/).