CHARLOTTE — Inside the Mecklenburg County Detention Center, a small group of men shuffle into a classroom twice a week, for a poetry class, led by Kelly Greene and Shane Manier.
Manier says the ‘Empowering Self’ program is the first poetry program at the jail that involves personal development. and it’s the first poetry class for men in the facility.
“We have a saying in the class that if you don’t address it, it’s going to get to messin’. So poetry is the perfect vehicle to express these things that manifest in our life. When they’re not addressed it can lead us down a really dangerous path,” says Manier.
James Brown told Channel 9 reporter Elsa Gillis he’s been in the detention center for about two months awaiting a court date.
While poetry is something new for some of his classmates, he’s always been drawn to the art form.
“Since I’ve been a little boy, I’ve been writing poetry, and I express myself through poetry. So it’s something that I gravitate towards, you know, to make myself better and how to express my feelings,” Brown shared.
He told Gillis that this is the class everyone wants to take.
Manier, a poet herself, knows firsthand the power of the spoken word, having found herself writing to deal with her own life experiences.
“I grew up in a very violent atmosphere, my father had to go to trial for murder. And then he had to go to trial again for attempted murder,” Manir said. “And so I just grew up around all these men who are in and out of prison, and I know that there was always a reason. Just because this person might have done this violent act, does not make them a monster, the only way you make a man and monster is by calling him one. And these men took care of me, and they loved me. And so I know, it’s not the whole of a person.”
She believes this class has the power to help some of these residents turn their lives around.
“There’s always a reason, always, it doesn’t matter what someone has done, there’s always a reason -- I promise you, 100% I believe there is, and you have to be able to find the reason and writing does that,” she said. “Poetry does that, it allows you to go there safely, and express yourself and figure out what to do to move forward.
Two months into the class, she says they’re already hearing of fewer conflicts in the facility.
“They will tell each other, ‘Go write a poem, like go write a poem,’ and it allows them to move through that emotion and not sabotage themselves, which is huge,” Manier says.
“It lets us know that there is hope, hope besides incarceration,” James shared. “You can take your past and not look upon it but change and make a better future for yourself.”
Brown hopes, in the future, to get involved in a local nonprofit that provides poetry programs to underserved areas - a group founded by Manier. She says many of the men have shared aspirations of doing work in the community after getting out of the detention center.
“We’re not going to see change, and we’re not going to see rehabilitation if we just keep doing the same thing over and over and don’t create these spaces,” says Manier.
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