Like a Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration

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Like A Hammeris an anthology of poems that unearths the shared traumas produced by Americas incarceration system.

These powerful poems of witness seek to address the oppressive systems that make up the US prison-industrial complex, revealing cracks in a criminal punishment system that too often appears unchangeable. The impacts of that system reverberate through lives and across generations. The poets gathered here aim to foreground the real experiences of people touched by the system, to upend dominant narratives, shine light on injustice, and act as a fulcrum around which to organize communities in support of change.

explores how art and imagination can serve as vehicles for endurance, offering us the hope to envision a better future.

Contributors include: Hanif Abdurraqib, Rhionna Anderson, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Cody Bruce, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Natalie Diaz, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Pat Ewok, Nikky Finney, Kennedy A. Gisege, Vicki Hicks, Jessica Hill, Randall Horton, Sandra Jackson, Catherine LaFleur, Ada Limn, Sarah Lynn Maatsch, Christopher Malec, Eduardo Martinez, John Murillo, Kenneth Nadeau, Angel Nafis, Leeann Parker, James Pearl, Christina Pernini, Raquel Salas Rivera, Patrick Rosal, Nicole Sealey, Evie Shockley, Patricia Smith, Sin Tes Souhaits, Vanessa Anglica Villarreal, Candace Williams, and SHE>i.

Author Bio

Diana Marie Delgado is the Executive Director of Hugo House and has more than twenty years of experience working in not-for-profits focused on advancing social justice and the arts. Her first collection, Tracing the Horse, was a New York Times Noteworthy Pick. Her chapbook, Late-Night Talks with Men I Think I Trust, was the 2018 Center for Book Arts winner and she has published poetry in Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, New York Times Magazine, Colorado Review, and Tin House. Delgado received her bachelor's degree at UC Riverside and her MFA at Columbia University. Her selected honors and awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Breadloaf, and the James D. Phelan Foundation. She is a member of the CantoMundo and Macondo writing communities.