Announcing The Deep Music: A Collaboration Between Poet Sarah Browning and Children of Incarcerated Fathers

A Little Girl Needs Daddy

A little girl needs Daddy
For many, many things:
Like holding her high off the ground
Where the sunlight sings!
Like being the deep music
That tells her all is right
When she awakens frantic with
The terrors of the night.

Like being the great mountain
That rises in her heart
And shows her how she might get home
When all else falls apart.

Like giving her the love
That is her sea and air,
So diving deep or soaring high
She’ll always find him there.
And that is why I wrote this poem
because “A Little Girl Needs Daddy” near.


by Deshayla Sherod, Hope House poet


I am excited to announce the launch of The Deep Music, a project of poetry and discussion about the prison crisis in the District of Columbia and the country as a whole. This project is made possible in part with a grant from the Creative Communities Initiative of the Community Foundation of the National Capital Region.

The United States has the world’s highest incarceration rate, imprisoning over two million of its citizens. Washington, DC’s incarceration rate is four times the national average. These two million men and women are largely invisible: we do not know their stories, we have not heard their voices. The impact of incarceration on families is another untold story. As a society, how can we evaluate the effectiveness of a policy, if we do not know its impact?

Poetry has the power to humanize social policy, to give voice to those made voiceless by our society’s decision to lock up so many of its citizens. The Deep Music will tell these human stories, through poems written by incarcerated men, their children, and myself.

In May and June of this year I am meeting for four Saturday mornings with young people involved with Hope House DC, a remarkable organization that serves incarcerated DC fathers and their families. Together we are writing poetry.

Here's some information about Hope House's important work:

"With a few notable exceptions there are not many programs that are focused specifically on improving and sustaining the fragile relationships between incarcerated fathers and their children. Through innovative projects, Hope House is providing exciting new leadership in this area. We continue to believe that just because a father is in prison, doesn't mean he has to stop being a Dad—and the children do not stop needing a Dad."

Please go to their website to read more: http://hopehousedc.org/

The Institute for Policy Studies is also a collaborator with us on the project, providing a place to meet and working space for me. They'll be hosting our public reading and exhibiting the young people's poetry. The oldest multi-issue progressive think tank in the country, IPS turns Ideas into Action for Peace, Justice and the Environment. I am very grateful for their support.

In the poetry workshop the young writers write about everything young people are concerned with: their neighborhoods, their families, boyfriends and girlfriends, dreams, the future. Growing up in low-income communities, they also write about gangs and shootings and fear. In the coming weeks we'll be posting some of their poems and I'll be posting drafts of my own new work. You'll be invited to comment -- and to support the project by spreading the word and contributing financially. Thank you for visiting.



- Sarah Browning





[Artwork by Eric Drooker: http://www.drooker.com/]