Poetry, Prison, and the Pandemic
At Liberty
English - May 07, 2020 08:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MB - ★★★★★ - 535 ratingsNews politics government culture news interview entrepreneurship business comedy health leadership Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Our guest today is Reginald Dwayne Betts, a poet, memoirist, and legal scholar. Loyal listeners will remember our conversation from March of 2019. The episode was called “A Poet Gives a 360 Degree View of The Criminal Legal System,” and we talked about Dwayne’s journey from a teenage defendant sentenced to 9 years in prison to a Yale Law School graduate and published poet. A lot has happened since we last spoke. Dwayne published a new book of poetry called Felon and had an exhibit at P.S. 1 MoMA with painter Titus Kaphar called Redaction. If that wasn't enough, Dwayne also completed a clerkship with a federal judge and is pursuing a PhD in law at Yale. And of course, this episode is being recorded months into a global pandemic, that poses particular risks for people in detention. Today we’ll discuss the impact COVID-19 is having on incarcerated people, what we should do to support the thousands of people who are getting out of detention as a result of the efforts by the ACLU and others, and how art can help us get through these uncertain times.
Listen to our first episode with Reginald Dwayne Betts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-poet-gives-a-360-degree-view-of-the-criminal-justice-system/id1396174920?i=1000432665627.