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New pieces are published each week. You can listen to Life Lines here on our site and via many podcast apps.

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Archive Catalog

Genres

  • Editorial
  • Essay
  • Letter
  • Memoir
  • Poetry
  • Song
  • Spoken word
  • Authors

  • Abu Ali
  • Bryan Bell
  • Darrell W. Maness
  • Elrico Fowler
  • George Wilkerson
  • James Jaynes
  • James Thomas
  • Leroy Mann
  • Lyle May
  • Paul Brown
  • Rodney Taylor, Sr.
  • Timothy White
  • Collections

  • Call & Response
  • Call & Response: The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
  • General submissions
  • Mothers' Day
  • Prologue
  • Uncategorized
  • Worship resources
  • Date

  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • Title

  • #98 ‘Tough on crime’ policies endanger the public
  • #105 A bucket of chicken
  • #37 A message for Mothers’ Day
  • #3 All that matters
  • #80 Amazing grace
  • #78 Anti-Catholic sentiment as public safety
  • #14 At the zoo, on display
  • #7 Bad men
  • #91 Beyond the wall (part 1)
  • #92 Beyond the wall (part 2)
  • #6 Blood on my sleeves
  • #101 Breaking news
  • #13 Breaking the silence
  • #69 Bringing in the new year
  • #24 Caged canaries
  • #103 Carrying my side of the plexiglass
  • #27 Closure
  • #75 Contradictions
  • #102 Conversation with a dear friend
  • #42 Dad
  • #67 Dance to the flame
  • #96 Demons in the grave
  • #30 Disquieted
  • #76 Do you love your friends?
  • #63 Domesticated
  • #79 Down in the river to pray
  • #84 Easy doesn’t come easy
  • #60 Fear of acceptance
  • #26 Fine dining in prison
  • #77 For freedom
  • #12 Freedom is
  • #40 Friendship
  • #82 Game day
  • #17 Give me a sign
  • #25 Hanging in the jar life
  • #32 Highrise, part one
  • #33 Highrise, part two
  • #73 Hope
  • #97 How do you see yourself
  • #81 How great thou art
  • #4 Hugs
  • #72 Hypertension
  • #89 In your eyes
  • #94 Insane world
  • #48 Inside of outside
  • #64 Invest in rehabilitation, not punishment
  • #99 Judicial pantomime
  • #41 Learning process
  • #62 Leaving Eden
  • #1 Life Lines
  • #87 Mama
  • #52 Marching orders
  • #23 Me and mine
  • #50 My son
  • #18 O Christmas tree
  • #38 One quiet breath
  • #28 Pantoum of the forgotten prisoner
  • #43 Pawn sacrifice
  • #16 Pilgrimage
  • #44 Potential to evolve
  • #10 Prison is time
  • #83 Reality check
  • #90 Refusing to die
  • #19 Release
  • #22 Shelf life
  • #61 Small windows
  • #95 Sorry that I let you down
  • #36 Spaced out
  • #104 Story of mine
  • #86 Supervision failures
  • #85 Synthesizing freedom
  • #74 Talking to my mom in autumn
  • #21 Talking to myself
  • #2 Ten cent a minute
  • #54 The darkness of nights past
  • #34 The elephant in the room
  • #39 The garage
  • #66 The gift of song
  • #53 The great American eclipse 2017
  • #58 The last lifeline
  • #68 The longest night
  • #45 The noisy blanket
  • #55 The plan
  • #57 The right to remain silent
  • #100 The timestretcher
  • #47 The tombs
  • #88 The weather
  • #29 The wind
  • #31 They took my baby away
  • #46 This is us
  • #11 This place
  • #20 Three Shifts of an Eleventh Hour
  • #51 Through the fog
  • #56 To shine, beat the sun up
  • #15 Trumped
  • #9 Twenty years
  • #8 Undead: voices from the grave
  • #35 What now?
  • #59 When I look
  • #93 When killers cry
  • #71 When You Look at Me
  • #65 Where does it end?
  • #5 Who am I
  • #49 You are
  • #70 You Have No Idea
  • Tags

  • Family
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  • Mental health
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  • Throw-away culture
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  • Perceptions
  • Music
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  • Parents
  • Holidays
  • Voice
  • Waiting
  • Sound
  • Belonging
  • Fear
  • Appeals
  • Lawyers
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  • Abandonment
  • Contact visits
  • Affection
  • Judgment
  • Innocence
  • Slavery
  • Presence
  • Responsibility
  • Religion
  • Dreams
  • Escape
  • Mass incarceration
  • Justice
  • Regrets
  • Discrimination
  • Exclusion
  • Windows
  • Christmas
  • Generational trauma
  • History
  • Non-human life
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  • Poverty
  • Singing
  • Work
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  • Television
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  • Expectations
  • Loss
  • Generational incarceration
  • Fashion
  • Style
  • Popular culture
  • Guilt
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    About

    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.

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    Copyright © 2022 Life Lines Collective and individual authors