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Who gets to write poetry? Whose voices are made public? Whose voices are heeded?
Erasing Frankenstein showcases a creative exchange between federally incarcerated women and members of the prison education think tank Walls to Bridges Collective at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario, and graduate and undergraduate students from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Working collaboratively by long-distance mail, the artists and contributors made the first-ever poetic adaptation of Frankenstein, turning it into a book-length erasure poem, I or Us. An example of “found art,” an erasure poem is created by erasing or blacking out words in an existing text; what is left is the poem. The title reflects the nature of the project: participants have worked as “I”’s, each creating their own erased pages, but together worked as an “us” to create a collaged “monster” of a book.
Erasing Frankenstein presents the original erasure poem I or Us alongside reflections from participants on the experience.
Introduction: Meet the Monster: I or Us by The Erasing Frankenstein Collective – Elizabeth Effinger in collaboration with Sue Sinclair
I or Us – The Erasing Frankenstein Collective
Chapter 1: The Harms of Incarceration and the Transformative Potentiality of Art: Reflections from Experiential Knowledge – Nyki Kish
Chapter 2: “Harm Asks Questions of Me”: On the Practice and Ethics of Erasure Poetry – Sue Sinclair
Chapter 3: The Composite Art and Carceral Aesthetics of I or Us – Elizabeth Effinger
Chapter 4: Embracing the “workshop of filthy creation”: Frankenstein, Failure, and the Public Humanities – Elizabeth Effinger
Afterword – Mark A. McCutcheon
Further Reading: Annotated List of Erasure Poems
Bibliography