Following the Attica prison uprising in September 1971, Celes Tisdale-a poet and then professor at Buffalo State College-began leading poetry workshops with those incarcerated at Attica. Tisdale's workshop created a space of radical Black creativity and solidarity, in which poets who lived through the uprising were able to turn their experiences into poetry. The poems written by Tisdale's students were published as Betcha Ain't: Poems from Attica in 1974. When the Smoke Cleared contains the entirety of Betcha Ain't, Tisdale's own poems and journal entries from the three years he taught at Attica, a previously unpublished collection of poems by Attica poets, and a critical introduction by poet Mark Nowak. In addition to the poetry, Tisdale's journal entries give readers a unique opportunity to experience what it was like to enter Attica as an educator and return week after week to discuss poetry. When the Smoke Cleared showcases these poets' achievements, their desire for self-determination, and their historical role as storytellers of Black life in a prison monitored exclusively by white guards and administrators.
Industry Reviews
"When the Smoke Cleared . . . beautifully documents what it means to bear witness while teaching, and the great responsibility that comes with ushering voices from the inside of prison walls to the outside. . . . When the Smoke Cleared is a time capsule of the sharp minds, open hearts, and courageous souls of men brutalized by the United States criminal justice system." -- Malcolm Tariq * PEN America *
"When the Smoke Cleared . . . reveals a great deal about survival in the wake of state violence and about the uses of prison education. . . . Supporting efforts like Tisdale's are important, not because they reform the institution, but because they can aid incarcerated people in building inside-outside relations and solidaristic organizing across facilities." -- Elias Rodriques * Dissent *
"Among the many strengths of this anthology is a blunt acknowledgment of the uprising as part of much larger historical mechanisms: namely, the last gasps of the civil rights movement and the nation's violent reaction to Black liberation. . . . The poems serve as a bulwark against the forgetting of the Attica uprising itself, but they also document the inner life and creative expression of the incarcerated-making for a visceral and intimate argument in favor of prison abolition." -- J. Howard Rosier * The Nation *
"A riveting contribution to contemporary literary history and recent social histories of the uprising. This volume poses far-reaching questions about prisons as sites of cultural production and the mobilization of Black political subjectivity at the beginning of what we now call the age of mass incarceration." -- David Sherman * Los Angeles Review of Books *
"A valuable glimpse into the beginnings of prison and justice writing programs in the US, especially ones focused on the African American experience, as well as a reminder of the historical and continued importance of such workshops in transforming the US carceral system." -- Timothy Bradford * World Literature Today *
