University of New Haven professor writes poetry about life in prison
Dr. Randall Horton is a professor of English at the University of New Haven, who teaches creative writing and specializes in the genres of African American, post-colonial and prison literature. Horton has contributed to those genres himself, with books of poetry and memoirs.
His most recent book, published in 2020, is “{#289-128}: Poems” (The University Press of Kentucky). It has been awarded a 2021 American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation, an organization focused on multicultural literature.
Horton will participate in the Connecticut Literary Festival at Real Art Ways in Hartford on Oct. 23. He also will do a reading on campus, at the Seton Art Gallery, on Nov. 8 from 4 to 6 p.m., in conjunction with an art exhibit on the subject of confinement.
The title of the book is the number Horton was assigned by the Maryland Department of Corrections when he did time in prison after years of involvement in drug smuggling.
“I titled the book that because I wanted to give license to it, to show that nobody has control over me. That number follows me along to this day but I control my own narrative,” Horton said in a phone interview. “If I’m going to be talking about the criminal justice system, what better poetic way is there than to use my number? It takes the narrative out of their hands and puts it in mine.”
Horton has mined his personal history in previous books, the memoir “Hook” and the poetry book “Pitch Dark Anarchy.” A new memoir, “Dead Weight,” will be published next year.
In telling stories of his youth, imprisonment and redemption — in the form of three college degrees, multiple literary awards, a professorship and mentorship of young offenders, activists and would-be writers — Horton is not looking for vindication. He even states on his website that he is “the only tenured full professor in the United States of America at a university or college with seven felony convictions.”
He just wants to put his story out there in the hopes that someone might be able to relate to it.
“People may think there has been some great miscarriage of justice, that my incarceration was a wrong thing. I don’t make that case. I made terrible choices. I don’t hide from those,” he said.
“I never asked for sympathy. I want to say, I’ve been through something and hey listen to what I’ve got to say, you might learn something,” he said. “I want to use myself as an example that if someone makes terrible decisions there’s always a way to come back.”
Horton was raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He attended Howard University, but didn’t finish because his criminal lifestyle took over. “I just got caught up in something,” he said. “Coming from Birmingham, which was so constrictive, I was taking risks. But in trying to find myself, I lost myself.”
That lifestyle ended when Horton was sent to prison for eight years. Observations from those years make up the first part of “{#289-128}: Poems.” In prison, while accepting his guilt, he encountered many inmates who were not guilty. His poem “Animals” tells their story:
“Cells are jam-packed with the guilty
who pled out though very innocent
7 sounded better than 25 straight”
He also tells stories of people destroyed by their time inside in “Nothing As It Seems”
“Juvenile tried as a bonafide adult questions
authority quite nice & by magic disappears
returning a broken boy beyond repair.”
The physical and spiritual boredom of prison life is told in “The Making of {#289-128} in Five Parts”:
“At some point repetition sets in:
boiled egg, farina, white bread, bland coffee
for breakfast reminders
of what you have become {#289-128}
a nonbeing from which
escape or release is a fairytale.”
The second part of the book describes Horton’s life after he got out of prison. Horton could wander the city for inspiration, but at times, life could be just as mournful:
“People refuse to see the who of what i am
since before post-racial. i am labeled:
armed, dangerous, known to pack,
dark & hyphenated, the typecast
memorialized in perpetual fear.”
In this segment, Horton writes about a particular element of the Black experience that happens all too frequently in the outside world: “A Primer for Surviving a Traffic Stop”:
“If seated in car remain calm.
pull over. position hands
at eleven & three, assume
this will not go okay. recall
brown, bell, martin …
facts will be misremembered: he
lunged, appeared to have—
a bulge, dressed wrong,
reached. a large metal object—
… breathe deep & prepare
for the figure approaching”
Horton acknowledged that “it was kind of sad that I had to write about that,” but he still felt compelled to do it. “It’s just about paying attention to what is happening in the world,” he said.
He didn’t let these indignities stop him. After his release, Horton received a bachelor’s degree at the University of District Columbia, an MFA from Chicago State University and a Ph.D. in poetry and poetice from SUNY Albany.
His writing has drawn widespread praise. He has been awarded Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award, the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature.
In addition, he acts as a mentor. He is on the advisory board of Pen America’s Pen Prison Writing Program, was poet-in-residence for the Civil Rights Corps in Washington DC, is a member of the performance group Heroes Are Gang Leaders. He travels around to adult and juvenile detention centers nationwide to conduct workshops.
As when he was inside — he wrote “a book might save my life after lock in” — reading and writing saved him. Horton recalled the mentorship of Bunnie Boswell, a case manager who worked with him in prison.
“She told me that after I got my time, I should continue writing. She thought there was something to the way I was writing. Nobody ever told me that I could be a writer,” he said. “I got that. I took it to heart. That was the thing kept me sane.”
For details on Horton, visit randallhorton.com.
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
