Who gets to write poetry? Whose voices are made public? Whose voices are heeded?
Erasing Frankenstein showcases a creative exchange between federally incarcerated women and members of the prison education think tank Walls to Bridges Collective at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario, and graduate and undergraduate students from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Working collaboratively by long-distance mail, the artists and contributors made the first-ever poetic adaptation of Frankenstein, turning it into a book-length erasure poem, I or Us. An example of "found art," an erasure poem is created by erasing or blacking out words in an existing text; what is left is the poem. The title reflects the nature of the project: participants have worked as "I"'s, each creating their own erased pages, but together worked as an "us" to create a collaged "monster" of a book.
Erasing Frankenstein presents the original erasure poem I or Us alongside reflections from participants on the experience. Elizabeth Effinger is an Associate Professor of English at the University of New Brunswick where she teaches British Romanticism with special interests in William Blake, the intersections of Romantic science and literature, the Anthropocene, human-animal studies, pedagogy and the public humanities. She co-edited William Blake's Gothic Imagination: Bodies of Horror (Manchester University Press, 2018).
Who gets to write poetry? Whose voices are made public? Whose voices are heeded? These are the questions at the heart of Erasing Frankenstein. This book tells the story of a public humanities project involving federally incarcerated women and university students in which participants collaboratively created a long erasure poem using Mary Shelleys Frankenstein as source text. What happens when we remake the monster? Who gets to write poetry? Whose voices are made public? Whose voices are heeded? This creation, birthed by the Erasing Frankenstein Collective, rips open a passionate new relationship, both to Mary Shelley's Gothic novel, and to the carceral 'conditions of unfreedom' with which the project contended. Again and again, I was struck by the crushing and the emergence of love and humanity it explores. Wonderfully provocative commentary encircles the work-on prison, erasure poetry, and the experiential ethics of this project itself. Erasing Frankenstein has much to teach us about the 'mess' and the value of public humanities. Unforgettable contribution! Erasing Frankenstein serves as an exemplary model of how theory meets praxis. This book will be an invaluable resource for any faculty member (nationally and internationally) working in prison education programs or any public-facing, humanities project, or programming. That this project includes for-credit university education, public outreach, artistic practice and product, and scholarly discussion makes it a model for twenty-first century public humanities programs that will determine the fate of the humanities, not only within the university, but also in the world.
artistic endeavors in prisons serve as a resistance to the prison industrial complex that continues to swell across North America
the project took place at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario, in partnership with a Laurier program, so local interest
the project itself, the long poem produced, and the contextualizing essays showcase Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, in relation to contemporary social justice issues
Presents a new perspective on the value of incarcerated voices; engages with a community of learners beyond the traditional walls of the classroom; builds pedagogic bridges and greater understanding with voices beyond those of the non-incarcerated university student; encourages and inspires incarcerated students to participate in educational programming.
Introduction: Meet the Monster: I or Us by The Er
