Spoon Jackson

Spoon Jackson (Stanley "Spoon" Russell Jackson) was born August 22, 1957 in Barstow, California.[1] He began serving a life without possibility of parole sentence in 1978.[1] He has served time in more than a half-dozen California state prisons. He is currently in California State Prison, Los Angeles County.[2]

Spoon began writing poetry during his years at San Quentin State Prison in the 80's. He enrolled in a four-year poetry workshop run by Judith Tannenbaum and discovered himself as a writer. Spoon played Pozzo in the 1988 production of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot directed by Jan Jonson which brought him international attention. Spoon served over 12 years in California State Prison, Sacramento (New Folsom), where was active as a teacher's aid and later had his own writing classes in the Arts In Corrections programs. Since then, Spoon has written plays, poetry, novels, fairy tales, short stories, essays, memoir and he frequently writes articles for magazines. Along with friends from Sweden, Spoon started the "Peace Gang" in order to spread and share his poetry.

In 2003, Michel Wenzer produced a documentary in Sweden entitled Three Poems by Spoon Jackson. The film included recordings of Spoon reciting his poems, taped from telephone calls. Michel Wenzer completed a full-length documentary (2011) about prisoners in the Art in Corrections program at New Folsom Prison: At Night I Fly. The title comes from one of Spoon Jackson's poems, he also features in the film. At Night I fly won the Swedish Guldbagge Film Award for best documentary of the year 2011. A documentary "Spoon" by Mishka Saal premiers 2016.

"Words of Realness", a suite for chorus and orchestra by Swedish composer Stefan Säfsten based on Jackson's poems, premiered on October 5, 2008 in Kista, Stockholm.

More recent music productions are the album The Prison Music Project 2015, produced by Zoe Boekbinder and Ani DiFranco, and Die Jim Crow 2016 produced by Fury Young.

Honors and awards

Spoon Jackson has won four awards from PEN American Center Prison Writing Program.

Publications

References

  1. 1 2 "Reading, writing, and rehabilitation". Women's Review of Books. November 2010. p. 7.
  2. ↑ Lambert, Georgia (May 17, 2009). "Around Blackhawk: From the soul of a prisoner comes beautiful music". Contra Costa Times.

External links

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