Grantee Database
Poetic Justice
Grant Year
2023-24
Grant Program
General Operating Support
Award Amount
$38,499.00
Project Description
With support from the CAC, Poetic Justice will increase fair compensation for current staff from justice-involved communities who are building and expanding an organization run by historically resilient people with personal experience of the carceral system. Poetic Justice is intentionally a community within and beyond women’s prisons and jails, with a belief in our shared humanity and in the critical urgency of providing trauma-informed poetry as tools in women’s facilities. We value community, support the data-driven restorative impact of poetry, and believe in the inestimable worth of people given no other option but prison – an historically oppressive system originally created by and for men. Poetic Justice is committed to serving and being served by people with lived experiences of women’s prison, and committed to a fundamental right to fair wages.
Organization Summary
Poetic Justice offers poetry classes and workshops in the following California carceral settings:
– CIW: 2 RAC classes/wk for a 1-year cohort, Distance Learning 1-year cohort, and ongoing annual projects – The Children’s Literature Project and Voices on the Inside
– CCWF: Distance Learning and Voices on the Inside
– Reentry Journal Project (former participants on parole)
– Las Colinas (SD Jail): 3 classes/wk (mainline, high security, and psychiatric units) / 7 sessions per year
– SD Youth Transitional Center: 1 weekly class / 7 sessions per year
– East Mesa Rehabilitation Program – English and Spanish language week-long workshops twice a year
Programs Launching in 2026
– CDCR Puerta La Cruz Conservation Camp
– Federal Pre-Trial Holding Facility
Other PJ Work in California
– UCSD 8th College
– Transitional Programming Works (TPW)
– Poet Laureateship
A typical weekly class provides gender-diverse and sensitive access by incorporating mindful breathing, trauma-responsive programming, community support, creative writing, and therapeutic visual arts.
For example, participants might explore aspects of anxiety, worthlessness, shame, etc. through poetry’s grapho-motor process within a trusted community engaged in evidence-based healing because putting language to the unspeakable supports healing from root causes of trauma and PTSD, and provides pathways forward. Whereas abuse, depression, and addiction damage language centers, poetry reactivates them. In fact research indicates that poetry (rhythm, metaphor, rhyme) activates the right hemisphere. The left brain is responsible for acquisition and expression, but the right brain’s ability to integrate unrelated concepts into comprehensible metaphor with repetition and syncopation can access language pathways damaged by trauma. Research, including JW Pennebaker’s work, shows “writing about upsetting events improves physical and mental health,” but only by creating safe communities for interoception and embodied agency. The traumatized brain doesn’t remember in logical sequences; trauma memory returns in sensory experiences rooted in the limbic system rather than language centers – this is why poetry is consequential for healing.
Organization
Poetic Justice
Address
PO Box 3997
San Diego
92163
County
San Diego
Region
Far South
Website
Congressional District
53
State Assembly District
San Diego 78th
State Senate District
San Diego 39th
