This article was cross-published with the Community Edition.
Erasing Frankenstein: Remaking the Monster, A Public Humanities Prison Arts Project, edited by Elizabeth Effinger, is a collection of erasure poems formulated from pages of Mary Shelly’s 1818 novel Frankenstein and essays on the project’s conception and execution.
Each erasure poem in the text’s I or Us collection was created by incarcerated women and members of the Walls to Bridges Collective (W2BC) at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener alongside graduate and undergraduate students from the University of New Brunswick.
No poems have an author name given, the work of the incarcerated women and members alongside the work of the students fully anonymous.
Accompanying the erasure poems are essays from Elizabeth Effinger, Sue Sinclair and Nyki Kish. Every aspect of Erasing Frankenstein, including the title of the erasure poetry collection was taken from Shelly’s Frankenstein. This text was chosen as no fewer than six of the characters in the story are faced with imprisonment themselves.
The theme of incarceration runs through the entirety of I or Us, alongside its intersection with carceral logic and how we each live within different carceral systems that operate within cultural systems.
The second half of Erasing Frankenstein has essays on these themes and the ethics of erasure poetry and ownership. I did not expect to have such a visceral reaction while reading through I or Us — while piecing through each poem, there were many moments while reading where I found myself truly emotional.
One poem that invoked such a reaction in me was one titled on prison. “I offer you no consolation, your disaster is irreparable. Go mourn and weep, for the eternal absence of love in this place,” the poem reads.
This selection, in my mind, echos the text’s overall thesis — whose voices are made public, heeded and are allowed to write poetry?
The essay collection within Erasing Frankenstein was also enjoyable to read, providing perspective on the text’s writing process and why such a collaboration was beneficial.
Of the five essays, my favourite was “The Composite Art and Carceral Aesthetics of I or Us” by Effinger.
This chapter essay gave a detailed breakdown and interpretation of I or Us as a form of composite art and carceral aesthetics. Composite art in this case refers to the combination of text and images in the same visual field where the two become so entangled that it is unclear where one ends and the other begins.
Carceral aesthetics is a concept developed by Nicole R. Fleetwood that refers to forms of art making and cultural engagement that occur during a period of mass incarceration and engage with various states of unfreedom and freedom.
Key to this chapter is Effinger’s section on “Artworking the Cultural Apparatus’, which provides a succinct examination of the poem on prison which impacted me so profoundly.
Having these insights into the creation of the erasure poems made me flip back to the ones that were being referenced and assisted me in looking at them in a new light — as I now had context that I did not have when reading them for the first time.
I believe having the essays at the end of the text was incredibly impactful for this reason — as the reader I was able to formulate my own opinions of the erasure poems before gaining more context later that helped me gain an even better understanding.
The work of all involved with Erasing Frankenstein is admirable, and I believe it is worth reading — even if you are not a fan of poetry.
I or Us in combination with the aforementioned essay collection makes for an engaging read, and Erasing Frankenstein provides a unique and touching look into the complex narratives and cultural conceptions of incarceration.
Photo by Bronte Behling.
