Make a Poem Cry

KENNETH E. HARTMAN was convicted of murder at nineteen and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. After he had served thirty-eight years, former California governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. commuted his sentence, and Hartman was paroled in 2017. He’s presently a freelance writer who is also working as a development coordinator and prison programs specialist for a Los Angeles–area nonprofit. His 2009 memoir, Mother California: A Story of Redemption behind Bars, won the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award. Hartman edited Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough, a collection of prisoner writings about life sentences without the possibility of parole, which won a 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award. His work has appeared in the New York Times and Harper’s.
 
LUIS J. RODRÍGUEZ was the poet laureate of Los Angeles from 2014 to 2016. He has taught creative writing as well as conducted poetry readings, lectures, and healing circles in prisons, juvenile lockups, and jails throughout the United States, Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe. He is the founding editor of Tia Chucha Press and cofounder of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles. Rodríguez is the author of fifteen books of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and nonfiction, including the best-selling memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca; Gang Days in L.A.