A few years ago, Dr. Irene Baird came across the autobiography of an inmate in Philadelphia. His story would become the inspiration for her latest project.
As the days slowly passed while this prisoner was held in isolation, he realized that the small table in his cell was being balanced on a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Lonely and bored, he began to page through the well-worn book, he wrote. Gradually, the discarded volume became a gateway for the prisoner. Through Shakespeare’s verse, he saw himself transformed.
Baird decided to see what her students would do when presented with Shakespeare’s immortal words. Like the man in Philadelphia, her students also called a prison cell home.
As she puts it, “When I spoke to colleagues about my desire to teach Shakespeare to inmates, they laughed. ‘It’s hard enough teaching college students about Shakespeare! How are you going to get prisoners to read these sonnets?’ they would say. But I had faith in my students. I knew what powerful literature could do. Now I get the last laugh.”
Hope through Literature
Dr. Irene Baird, an adjunct professor of education at Penn State Harrisburg and the director of the Women’s Enrichment Center here in the city, began bringing hope through literature to the disenfranchised more than 20 years ago. As a form of educational outreach, she worked with homeless women in conjunction with the Harrisburg YWCA, presenting them with literature as a way to assist them in finding their own stories and the will to change.
In 1994, Baird began doing the same type of work with women at Dauphin County Prison. In 1999, she began working with men, as well.
Despite the change of venue, Baird’s approach remained the same. She used literature to help people find a voice and find themselves.
Over the years, Baird has observed patterns among her students. For the women she works with, she found that healing comes by transforming their definitions of relationships and their self-esteem. For the men, the focus was placed on responsibility and respect both for self and for others. But for both men and women, Baird insists that she is but an outside facilitator. The voices and the transformations must come from within the inmates themselves.
“I am not an agent of change. Only those who want to change can,” says Baird.
Opening Doors
Baird decided to focus her students’ attention on one sonnet in particular, Sonnet 29.
“When, in disgrace with fortune and in men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state,” is Shakespeare’s dejected opening, a cry borne of loneliness and despair. Yet, by the sonnet’s end, Shakespeare proclaims, “That then I scorn to change my state with kings.” Even in his darkest moments, Shakespeare would not trade his life for any other.
Her students began to compose their own versions of Sonnet 29. The results reveal the complex humanity of the men and women who have found themselves within Dauphin County’s prison community. Their sonnets parallel Shakespeare’s, stating that even in a place as hopeless as a prison, the lives they have been given are gifts. Like Shakespeare, Baird’s students would not exchange their lives for another.
Baird never made any comments concerning form or grammar. Some students chose to write more traditional poems, while others incorporated modern styles and genres such as free verse and hip-hop into their interpretations. Her only goal was to give students another avenue out of voicelessness.
The inmates’ sonnets demonstrate what Baird had long suspected.
“I realize that some students I work with will not make the changes they need to make in order to turn their lives around,” she said. “But these sonnets show me that many of my students realize that they can be valued in the community if they first value themselves.”
Baird’s motivation is bolstered by visits from her graduates who have made it outside. Her graduates come to her office to tell her about the jobs they are working. One of her graduates is now working in a law office. She takes heart in the small irony of a former inmate working for the legal system. Her hope is that the words of Shakespeare and other literary greats played a part in that.
The desire to be responsible and to start again; the regret of letting down family and friends; and the knowledge that there is more to life than prison walls—these themes all burst from the words of Baird’s students. Furthermore, her students express a desire to be a part of the community that they have offended, to do right by Harrisburg. And their words remind us that our community includes Dauphin County Prison as much as the neighborhoods where we live. They remind us that we are all in this together.
