Mery Smith brings poetry to the inside: ‘Poetry does save lives’

The role of Spokane poet laureate asks laureates to, putting it plainly, bring poetry to one and all. To do this, laureates host classes and workshops, among other projects, which give members of the community the opportunity to listen to, read, write and, above all, appreciate poetry.

During her time as poet laureate, Mery Smith is working within the community at large, but also within the Airway Heights Correctional Facility, a community which tends to be overlooked.

While acknowledging it’s imperative to feed, heal and help people in applicable ways, Smith also recognizes the benefits of appreciating art of all mediums.

“It’s less about clout or being the best poet in the room, because I’ll tell you, I’m not,” she said of the poet laureate position. “But what it was for me was this idea that I saw how poetry could work harder and offer actual mutual aid to people.”

Her eight-week workshop is presented in collaboration with Bruce Asper, the student director of Eastern Washington University’s Writers in the Community. The correctional facility workshops will begin in the near future.

Smith has facilitated 12-step program meetings at the correctional facility, but this workshop marks her first time bringing poetry to those inside. The inspiration for her laureate project comes from a personal place, as both of Smith’s brothers have been incarcerated in the past.

Her older brother, who she said made her fall in love with words, died from a fentanyl overdose the week he was to be released from jail. Up until he died, he was sending poems to Smith. He died in July, and she applied to be poet laureate in August.

“Poetry does save lives,” she said. “It did not save his, but it has saved mine, and I believe it saved others, and it has the power to do so.”

This series of workshops is also Smith’s first time working with Asper and Writers in the Community. She said she and Asper agreed from the beginning about the “life-saving errand” of writing.

The pair agreed they want the workshops to focus on aspects like recovery, mental health, addiction and writing your way to the truth.

“We share the same ideal and really the guiding principle is that everyone should have access to art and community,” she said. “Those things should not feel like privileges, and the more people who have access to art and community, the more people who believe in telling their story, the better.”

Writers have hosted workshops at Airway Heights Correctional Facility in the past, but, for one reason or another, those workshops fizzled out. The facility then was open to the ideas Smith and Asper had.

Smith said she’s grateful that Asper, representing the long-running, long-respected Writers in the Community, expressed such strong belief in her plans for this series.

“He couldn’t have known what a gift that was and how much it meant to me,” she said. “As my brother’s sister, there’s no greater gift. It was like (Asper) gave me this opportunity to do this thing. I wanted a piece of my brother to be not for nothing, not for waste.”

Smith said her workshops at the correctional facility will closely resemble workshops and programs she hosts around town, including at the Community School, and elsewhere, like Big Bend Community College.

Workshops start with a free-write session, as Smith believes in the importance of “clearing out the drain” of thoughts ranging from “I should be doing something more productive than writing in this class” to song lyrics that are stuck in the writer’s head.

She also believes it’s important for each writer to develop a relationship between the pen and their paper, or for others their phone and the Notes app, and to make space and time to meet themselves wherever they are that day.

“I tell all my students my greatest thing is I won’t look away,” she said. “You could say anything, and I will not look away. I can hear anything. I can look at anything, and I believe, with all the love and compassion, in that looking, to bear witness to somebody else.”

She will then introduce that week’s group of poems and have discussion topics ready for moments when things are a little quiet as students “get (their) voices ready to be courageous.”

From there, students will use the poems Smith selected to inspire poems of their own. Smith likens the experience to a yoga teacher guiding with suggestions, not requirements.

“Once you’ve done yoga a while, you get your own practice, and then the person there is a guide and instructor, but you’re often doing your own practice in addition to their prompts,” she said. “We’ll play with rules and form itself, but really, I’m more interested in the heart of it, the participation, the enthusiasm and the courage to pick the … pen up in the first place.”

After the initial eight weeks, Smith said sustainability is the goal. When talking about marginalized groups, she said, workshops and programs can cause more harm than good if sustainability is not considered in the planning stages.

Smith could envision creating a publication of work created during the workshop similar to the “InRoads” anthology Writers in the Community publishes. Ultimately, she hopes this series shows and excites people about what is possible.

She stresses that you don’t have to be a poet laureate to make an impact.

“If your heart perks up when you hear about these things, it’s probably for you,” she said.