Once You're Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration

Once

You’re Inside

Poems Exploring Incarceration

By

Ann Bracken

Praise for Once You’re Inside

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Language liberates. Ann Bracken, working as a poet/ teacher, shines light into darkness so that prisoners become people of purpose who speak and are heard. Social action, at its truest meaning, reinforces the best in us, and Bracken takes charge in a journey of change not only for prisoners but for herself. The student-prisoners now know what it is to exist with a good practice. At the same time Bracken is writing her owns poems as commentaries. When poetic will and societal issues come together, we have a meaningful book; when lyricism and heart come together, we have a work of art.

Grace Cavalieri

Maryland Poet Laureate

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In a collection of unflinching, gutsy, and heart-felt poems, Once You’re Inside transports readers to the grim and grisly realities of America’s prison industrial complex. Ann Bracken brilliantly inspires readers to explore both discomfort and shared humanity with renderings of life inside one of the most dehumanizing institutions in the modern world.

Jess Fletcher

Operations Director, Iron City Magazine

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In Once You’re Inside, Ann Bracken exposes the hidden infrastructure of prison and explores the interior lives of incarcerated men and women with tenderness and objectivity. Her artist’s eye registers seemingly insignificant details that speak volumes about the myriad ways the carceral system attempts to rip away possibility, dignity, and human connection. Set within the most barren of landscapes, her poems convey the power of creative expression and shared stories that enables the human spirit to prevail.  

Wendy Jason

Founding Director, Justice Arts Coalition

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Ann Bracken’s poetry collection, Once You’re Inside, is jammed with meaningful vignettes about people in prison. Without being the least bit sentimental, she gives the reader insight into the minds and feelings of a wide range of incarcerated people—real people we can almost know from her poems. Each poem stands well alone, but read the entire book for a truthful portrayal of what life in prison is like.

Laura Bates, Associate Professor of English, Indiana State University

Author of Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

Once You’re Inside:

Poems Exploring Incarceration

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Ann Bracken

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Charing Cross Press

Simpsonville, MD

Copyright 2021 by Ann Bracken

Charing Cross Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any other form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021903174

ISBN 978-0-578-94370-1 Ebook

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Cover design: Christine Rains

Cover art: Carole Alden

Book design: David Saunier

Logo design: Christella Potts

Photo credit: Brian Potts

Dedication

For the men and women incarcerated in the United States and for their families

In grateful appreciation for all who shared their stories with me

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"We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone