The Kitchen Sisters Interview

Poet C. D. Wright

For those of you in the Bay Area, poet C.D. Wright is speaking at City Arts & Lecture series at the Herbst Theatre, in San Francisco, Wednesday evening January 7, 2009 at 8PM.

We'll be interviewing Wright as part of a story we're producing about photographer Deborah Luster for our series about the secret lives of girls.

Luster and Wright collaborated on One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, a book featuring a collection of haunting, sepia tinted photographs taken by Luster of Louisiana's incarcerated men and women. Wright's poems accompany the self-posed portraits to "ward off forgetting."

This photo was taken
by Luster at a women's
prison in Louisiana.

Here's one of Wright's poems from One Big Self.

Dear Prisoner,

I too love. Faces. Hands. The circumference

Of the oaks. I confess. To nothing

You could use. In a court of law. I found.

That sickly sweet ambrosia of hope. Unmendable

Seine of sadness. Experience taken away.

From you. I would open. The mystery

Of your birth. To you. I know. We can

Change. Knowing. Full well. Knowing.

It is not enough.

Poetry Time Space Death

I thought. I could write. An exculpatory note.

I cannot. Yes it is bitter. Every bit of it, bitter.

The course taken by blood. All thinking

Deceives us. Lead (kindly) light.

Notwithstanding this grave. Your garden.

This cell. Your dwelling. Who is unaccountably free.

Photographer Deborah Luster describes her her collection of inmate photographs in video by Doug MacCash, Times Picayune Art Critic.