Alex Tretbar was living in Portland when he was arrested. The five years he spent in Oregon’s prison system gave him time to refine his writing. Tretbar was recently awarded first prize in the PEN America Prison Writing Award in Poetry. He joins us to share his writing and his experience in Oregon’s criminal justice system.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: Alex Tretbar spent five years in Oregon’s prison system. He got out in July. Then earlier this month he won first prize in poetry in the 2022 PEN America Prison Writing Awards. Alex Tretbar joins us now. Alex, welcome to Think Out Loud and congratulations. I thought we could start with the first part of your award winning poem. It’s called “Variations on an Undisclosed Location”.
Alex Tretbar: Sure. So this is Part One:
Solitary wasn’t.
All of the other and inward voices came out.
My neighbor summoned summer with his absent eye tooth,
perfect mimic of a lost in basement cricket.
I carved Lou Reed lyrics into my concrete rhomboid exoskeleton.
I found a letter toothpasted to the ceiling claiming I had written it.
I responded.
Dear Alex, dear paper, dear ceiling.
I know you’ve been confused since figuring out adulthood is just a bead curtain you part,
like hair before the yearbook picture. But…
I tore the letter to twigs.
The ensuing fire clarified things.
The vague and desperate ruins charred with protecting past tenants,
the hundred I-was-heres.
You’d think every human who walked the earth was born in that room,
the way it trembled with scuttled memories,
some of which I recognized.
In addition to archaeology,
attractions included solitaire with breadcrumbs,
blissless calligraphy, brushes with psychosis
and sometimes I-forgot-my-name was also a word.
Amethyst, alms or asylum.
Miller: How much poetry did you write before you were incarcerated?
Tretbar: Hardly any, actually. Um most of my writing before prison was professional. So technical writing. I wrote a little bit of music, lyrics for music, journalism, but not very much creative writing.
Miller: What changed? What was it about being in prison, being behind bars that made you turn to poetry?
Tretbar: Well I suppose I found, in the first few weeks when I was locked up, that I wasn’t really going to be able to write the kind of journalism that I’d been writing. And I’ve always loved poetry and short fiction but I came to see poetry as a different kind of journalism, like a journalism, almost like the spirit of a given moment. I think a lot of the poems I wrote in jail the first 13 months I was in jail are pretty objectively terrible
Miller: Who were they for?
Tretbar: Mostly for me though I did send them out to friends and family, and shared them with people I was incarcerated with. I almost see poems as kind of mnemonic devices. They’re a way of recording a moment. It’s almost like a little biography of a moment.
Miller: You were addicted to opioids, first prescription painkillers, and then later heroin for many years. That’s what led to your time in prison. What effect did incarceration have on your addiction?
Tretbar: I would say it saved my life.
Miller: It saved your life?
Tretbar: Yeah, absolutely. I have kind of a complicated relationship with prison because, obviously you deal with bureaucracy. And you deal with dehumanization. You don’t necessarily get to choose who you’re hanging out with. But I think, and it depends on which prison you’re in. But the prisons I spent time in, I think there were enough tools there and people willing to support you, where if you want to change you can. It’s not necessarily easy, but I was able to turn my life around and really focus my time on my craft. And I met a lot of people over the years that shared similar goals as mine. And so it was a productive time for me.
Miller: I’ve seen you say earlier that writing wasn’t a choice. What do you mean by that?
Tretbar: So for me, I think to a certain extent, I’m kind of lucky to be a writer. When you get to prison, I think everyone who goes to prison, they end up in a cell and they probably ask ‘what do I have, what am I good at, what are my skills, what are my resources? And if you’re a botanist or an architect, then you’re gonna have a harder time doing what you love in prison. Whereas as a writer, you don’t really need much in the way of technology so the choice was an easy one because I’ve always written whether it’s journalism or technical writing. But it wasn’t a choice literally in the sense that I didn’t make a choice which I just started doing it.
Miller: It seems like you turned to poetry because it was the medium that most spoke to you or helped you work through what you needed to work through when you were behind bars. You’re free now as of July. Are you still interested in writing poetry?
Tretbar: Absolutely. And through my time in prison I really came to enjoy the collaborative spirit of writing. You know the first couple years I was writing mostly in solitude and then I made more and more friends who were interested in poetry or writing or fiction writers. I kind of helped establish a community of writers and I enjoy teaching. I work as a GED tutor and helped tutor people getting their Associate’s degrees. And ironically enough I’d like to get back into jail or prison to teach creative writing to inmates.
Miller: Do you mind reading us one more section from your poem? This is the Fifth Section.
Tretbar: Sure.
Standard lab work.
She said hold still.
I told her I knew a better place, she smiled
and somehow her smile was reflected in her needle.
She said trust me, it won’t hurt a bit. And it didn’t.
But the lack of red foam augured a miss.
Okay, let’s try this one more time which turned into six
and then moved on to the other arm,
her eyes on the elbow crooks as though she might find my soul there and solve my life.
Finally, she asked, where is this better place you mentioned?
I showed her a valley between scars.
And when she thumbed it, she whispered, so you are alive.
Miller: You’re alive and you’re out of prison. And you just told us before that section that you want to go back into prisons to teach writing. Why?
Tretbar: I’ll kind of borrow from one of my mentors from Oregon State, Mike Cooper, who I came to know at Deer Ridge and Madras who said that he teaches it at Central Oregon Community College and Oregon State. And he says the best students he’s ever had are incarcerated people because they do their homework. They show up. They want to be there. And I don’t know, there’s some kind of energy in classrooms in prison that you really just can’t find in traditional academia.
Miller: What do you think you’re going to get out of it?
Tretbar: Yeah, it’s funny you say that too because the classes I’ve worked in in prison, some of the other inmates often ask the volunteers ‘why are you here?’ Why are you choosing to come into a prison to teach me?’ And often the volunteer’s answer is ‘because I’m benefiting just as much as you are’. And you know, it’s kind of the age old thing you hear from teachers that teachers learn just as much as they teach. So I consider myself an eternal student and I never want to stop learning. And, you know, some of the most intelligent and kindest people I’ve met have been in prison. And I just want to be a part of that, both for their growth and mine.
Miller: Alex, thanks very much.
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