Voices Behind Walls.org

Voices Behind Walls is a creative writing workshop that has taken place in juvenile detention centers in El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico. The workshop consists of writing poetry and the study of literary authors/poets/artist, chess, music (specifically Hip Hop, Soul, Jazz and other genres), beat production, radio broadcasting, film and vocal/audio recording.

In 2005-2006, poet Emmy Pérez founded the Spoken & Written Word Poetry Project for underserved young adults in El Paso with the literary organization BorderSenses and with a modest grant from the City of El Paso. After teaching college writing for five years, she recognized that few poetry workshops and public reading opportunities existed for the most underserved young adults in the city. At the start of 2006, she began creative writing workshops with several groups of incarcerated and adjudicated youth at the Delta Challenge Boot Camp Program, a boot camp/juvenile detention center in El Paso. In these workshops, students read and discussed contemporary poetry from a variety of traditions, including writers from the borderlands, with the primary goal of writing their own poems. Bilingual poems and poems written in Spanish were encouraged. A large part of the class involved students reading their works to the class and the class discussing the content of their poems. Pérez also taught writing workshops in the community and organized public readings for participants. The Delta Challenge Program generously escorted students in high standing to participate with other young adults in these community readings where together they moved audiences with their communicative poetry.

Pérez had met Lee Rhyanes at a poetry gathering at New Mexico State University the year before and had learned about his work with ¡Aquí se puede! (“Here You Can”), a violence prevention program for at-risk youth in Las Cruces, NM, and his college radio show: leehiphopshow.com. In April of 2006, they met and discussed plans to collaborate the audio recording that Rhyanes was working on with youth in ¡Aqui se puede! with the creative writing program at Delta Challenge Program in El Paso. Rhyanes joined Pérez as an instructor at the Delta facility, where he incorporated his knowledge of Jazz, Soul, and Hip Hop music into the workshop. During the summer of 2006, Rhyanes and Pérez gathered over a hundred recordings of poems and Hip Hop/Rap lyrics by youth from the Delta Challenge Program. A writing workshop was also held at the Lower Valley Branch Library in El Paso, TX to bring together youth who had participated in the writing workshop during their incarceration at the Delta Youth Facility (and had since been released) and high school students from the surrounding area also interested in recording their own poetry. Together, they completed a poetry CD for the project, and this also completed the grant cycle.

In the fall 2006, Pérez began a teaching position at the University of Texas-Pan American in South Texas and Rhyanes continued the workshops at Delta Academy. Rhyanes and Pérez were determined to keep the project moving forward and continue to collaborate from their respective locations.

Upon returning for his second year with the MFA Creative Writing program at NMSU in the fall of 2006, Rhyanes continued conducting workshops every Saturday from 8 am to 12 pm with youth from the Delta Challenge Boot Camp Program. The primary goals of the workshop are to provide youth with a platform to express themselves through their writing (poetry), to learn more about other writers, poets, Hip Hop lyricists and musicians, and to create an environment where discussion focused on the content of their writing, assisting their development as writers in effort to help improve vocabulary, grammar and critical thinking skills. At the end of each month starting in September, Rhyanes also held recording sessions, where youth were provided with the opportunity to record their poetry on a portable recording studio that Rhyanes would set up inside of the facility. The recordings acted as a means of encouraging students to further discuss the experiences shared in their writing after listening to them in audio form, and to provide them all with an opportunity to critique some of their oratory skills in hopes to improve the confidence and rhythm of their performance/presentation.

On December 8, 2006, Rhyanes attended a free workshop at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Las Cruces, NM. The topic of the workshop was “After Thought to After Care: Re-entry of Juvenile Parolees into the Community.” At the workshop he met with John Paul Taylor and the Director of Treatment Services at the J. Paul Taylor Detention Center, Sandra Crane and spoke to them about the writing workshop in El Paso. A few weeks later Rhyanes began conducting workshops at the J. Paul Taylor Detention Center every Wednesday from 12 to 3 pm. Workshops focused on similar goals and activities that were incorporated into the Delta workshops but also included a film night program twice a month in which youth watch/discuss films related to some of the content and themes that came out of the youth’s writing and/or discussion during the workshops on Wednesdays. Rhyanes also began broadcasting some of their poetry recordings on his radio program The Representation Show, which aired every Friday from 12 to 4 pm on KRUX 91.5 at NMSU.

In the spring 2007, Pérez started writing workshops at a boot camp detention facility in South Texas where she and a colleague taught literature, creative writing, and assisted students with GED essay preparation. Pérez used poetry recordings from Rhyanes’ radio program as an educational tool in the classes. In May 2007, Pérez and some of her colleagues facilitated a creative writing contest for participants, made a chapbook of one particularly prolific student’s poems, and awarded signed copies of books donated by generous Chicana/o authors. Plans to expand the program were set in place with the hope to include a service learning component for college students to contribute to the project.

In March of 2007, Rhyanes asked the youth to come up with a name for the program that would represent where all of their writings were coming from. At Delta, a student by the name of Joseph recommended that the program be called Voices Behind Walls. Voices Behind Walls became the name of the writing program that was now taking place in Las Cruces, NM and El Paso, TX. This also marked the beginning stages towards our online presence at the url address: voicesbehindwalls.org

A few months later in September, The Beat Within published poems from Michael Gomez of the J. Paul Taylor Detention Center workshops in Las Cruces, NM. Michael Gomez became the first writer from the Voices Behind Walls program to be published in The Beat Within. His writing was featured in the September volume 12.35. You can view the entire publication by clicking on the following link: | The Beat | v.12.35 | .pdf |

On December 7, 2007, the Voices Behind Walls program was awarded the Endowment Scholarship Fund Award by the New Mexico State University English Department. For the past two semesters, the NMSU English Department also began supporting the Voices Behind Walls workshops through La Sociedad Para Las Artes Writers in the Schools Program. The following Spring semester 2008, Rhyanes instructed a Writing in Humanities and Social Science course at NMSU titled Writing Inside: Prison Literature. To view the syllabi | click here |.

Throughout 2007, Pérez worked on a proposal to present at the 2008 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in New York City. The proposal was accepted and on February 2, 2008, Emmy Pérez, Lee Rhyanes, Michelle Otero, Sehba Sarwar, Carolina Monsivais and Minerva Laveaga hosted a panel titled Voicing Needs & Creative Survival: Writing in Multilingual Community Spaces that discussed strategies and experiences coordinating writing programs with incarcerated youth and adults, survivors of domestic violence, survivors of sexual assault, migrant farm workers and immigrant youth.

Voices Behind Walls.org is a website designed and created by Rhyanes in effort to provide information on the writing program's history and to allow youth that partcipated in the program to maintain a point of contact. Voices Behind Walls.org also hopes to collaborate efforts with other writing programs in the area and to provide youth with as many outlets/resources as possible in effort to create a support structure that celebrates their creative talents and that encourages their venture into institutions of higher education. Recently, an online newsletter was added and is published every month with information related to other youth programs around the world, news and links to relevant information pertaining to juvenile justice and literature. This website is also hoping to build on to the newsletter by providing research materials with information on youth issues, juvenile justice, education and incarceration for students, staff, and online visitors that are interested in learning about varous creative arts programs. Voices Behind Walls is an outlet for youth to connect ideas and knowledge amongst themselves and with the outside, and to exist as an option where youth have a time and place where they can be productive and utilize their creative talents with the goal that it will influence positive goals for tomorrow.

On June 26, 2010, Rhyanes returned to the J. Paul Taylor Center after meeting with JPTC staff to host creative writing/recording workshops twice a month on Saturdays.  In July 2010, youth from the JPTC workshops also made their way back into The Beat Within Volume 15.31.  More information on these updates is provided in the Newsletter No. 11: Doña Ana County issue | click here |. 

*BIOGRAPHY WILL BE UPDATED PERIODICALLY*