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TIR Announces Collaboration and Launch of the University of Iowa Prison Writing Project

TIR Staff

We are delighted to announce the University of Iowa Prison Writing Project. The Prison Writing Project, a collaboration between the University of Iowa’s award-winning literary magazine The Iowa Review and the UI Writing University, connects the writing community on campus with prison writing communities in Iowa and beyond. The project seeks to foster and support the writing and self-expression of incarcerated individuals and is grounded in the belief that these voices offer unique contributions to the literary landscape.

Poems from BABY, I DON'T CARE

Chelsey Minnis

V.I.P.S

This is a matter of life or death, probably death.
Your bullet is very close to my heart.
You're way off base, darling.
Let's put some ice on our fingers.
By ice, I mean diamonds.

You know how I am.
Oysters for lunch, dinner and breakfast.
A broken heart is not for me.
Now, don't I want some mink?
Don’t tell me you're a bloody communist!

The View

Ryo Yamaguchi

Last and then the throughway curled up to see the echoing of the specifics

what we and the material and what houses the material don’t you mean where

sold by value thinking hard the table window the insert the view edit don’t not look

a balloon descending down into the mirrors this is what no it’s the city streets

a hole in the cement the train the view edit the file wake up don’t think do go

gripped by the before the last night the coming of age the chest rotating toward

don’t you mean future futuring futurescope the dispersal hawing nictitate do go

You Occurred to Me

Katie Ford

A particular light in February,
singular in the sheen of ice upon the hill,
the ground cover grain or rayless yellow,
was sent to me in a photograph by someone thinking of me then,
a man walking in hills, I occurred to him, I
occurred. To make something of me, a photograph,
a stopping by me, a sending, it was an I
who filled another’s mind. Our eyes let what is good
pass in and what is unnecessary sieve through—

W R E S T L I N G S E A S O N

SEAN SHEARER

I was made from Hawaiian Punch ice cubes
chicken breasts & cauliflower ear Sir Newton’s
Law of Motion drilling double leg takedowns
sprawls shucks fireman's carry I was made from
garbage bag T-shirts cherry Skoal black spit
filling water bottles in the back of classrooms
I was made from ritual a bouquet of boys
pissing on the other freshman & I that lettered

TIR Announces Collaboration and Launch of the University of Iowa Prison Writing Project

Poems from BABY, I DON'T CARE

The View

You Occurred to Me

W R E S T L I N G S E A S O N

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