Life Lines is an audio journal of poetry, spoken word, and other creative writing by people living on death row. Published as a podcast, it is a production of the Life Lines Collective, a group of creatives, both incarcerated and not, who made their public debut with a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2016.
Life Lines is about connection. It’s about finding surprising spaces to share endangered, beautiful life. It’s about recognizing our power and our powerlessness to give and take life.
We publish new pieces each week, words which we hope invite communion, however limited and imperfect, with those struggling to live inside state prisons.
Because of regulations restricting access to prisons, contributors record their work by phone. Life Lines leaves listeners with the line static from these calls as a reminder of all the lines – race, class, gender, iron bars and barbed wire – we’ve constructed between ourselves. As we make these divisions explicit, we hope our work can open new, shared spaces in spite of these boundaries, if only for a moment.
Take a chance with us: listen.