P.O. Box 34

Reviewed by: Anastasia Hutnick

Review date: March 16, 2025

Site Link: https://pobox34.github.io/pobox-34/

Archive Link:

• http://archive.today/sTQpM (Home Page)
  
• https://archive.ph/aXTMj (Covid Responses Landing Page)
  
• https://archive.ph/vPcDo (Hidden Lives Illuminated Overview, Eastern State Penitentiary Site)

Keywords: Access, Activism and Advocacy, Archiving, Biography and Prosopography, Critical Making, Digital Publishing, Fine Arts, Media Studies, Minimal Computing, Preservation, Public Humanities

Data Sources:

• Digitized personal essays, poetry, and other written works
  
• Artwork
  
• Animated Films

Processes:

• Publishes essays, poetry, artwork, and animation from people in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic
  
• Opens a dialogue between the reader and the writers as well as invites readers to contribute to the publications on the site

Presentation:

The project is a web-based archive of writings, artworks, and animation created by thirteen writers in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. The archive also includes the direct responses to the pandemic and how it affected the anonymous writers’ physical and mental health. In addition to the original works of the thirteen writers, the gallery also contains pieces created in dialogue with these works, such as Inspired by Michael Lyons Poem Nighttime Catechism. Each writer has their own page, containing links to their works pages as well as an embedded Vimeo video of their contribution to the Hidden Lives Illuminated project and link to their contact information if provided. Each piece of writing or art has its own dedicated page as well, with a title (Label), creator (Writer), date of creation, and image link provided.

Digital Tools Used:

• Minicomp / Wax

Languages:

• English

Review

P.O. Box 34 was created from a collaboration between thirteen incarcerated writers and a team of students, professors, staff, and alumni from the University of Pennsylvania (namely, the Annenberg Center, the Wolf Humanities Center, and the Price Lab for the Digital Humanities), and artist / professor Erika Tsuchiya-Bergere to publish the aforementioned creators’ personal reflections, essays, stories, poems, and artwork. Through receiving the Campaign for Community Grant and contributions from the Wolf Humanities Center’s Hershey Humanities Against Discrimination Fund, the project was able to pair two Penn students with several of these writers in a workshop taking place in 2021 in addition to the pieces already received in 2020. The project’s motto is “Connecting voices inside with voices outside,” as found in the website’s footer. The Wax framework was chosen for its simplicity as well as for its ability to be deployed locally on one’s computer, as the inmates participating in the project did not have internet access.

The website is fairly minimalist. There are the standard About and Support sections, but the focus, whether in the Home page, the Browse page, the Search page, or listed in the writers’ individual pages, are the written and artistic works. Each work is presented in PDF form with basic metadata (title, writer, and date created) below. In doing so, the user is encouraged to jump right into the media provided. Each piece varies in both medium as well as subject, ranging from personal growth to failures of the justice system to systemic racism to the compounded isolation of COVID-19. In fact, there is an entire section dedicated to presenting nine responses to living through the pandemic in the prison system, during which inmates were under a 23-hour lockdown with only one hour out of their cells; several were in critical condition, had long-term effects, or lost their lives.

Users could in turn submit artwork and writing in conversation with the pieces published by sending such works to the project’s email address. In the listed works, I found a dialogue between writer Michael Lyons (also referred to as Myke L) and artist Justine Cal. Inspired by Michael’s poem On the Wings of Morning Glory, in which he dreams about flying home, away from the loneliness and seclusion of his cell, Justine paints Michael’s face behind bars as four small black angels fly around the perimeter carrying blue morning glory petals, looking like hearts. In Michael’s poem Nighttime Catechism, he prefaces the work with a letter to Justine, thanking her for the painting and expressing his excitement at her inspiration from his previous poem. He goes on to introduce the poem to her, and she responds with another painting based upon this new poem as well. The exchange embodies the idea of “Connecting voices inside with voices outside” as these two creators inspire each other and riff off of the deeper meanings in each other’s works.

Yet, this is the only such exchange present in the archive. The open dialogue that the site sought to achieve has gone mostly unanswered. The archive has instead become in itself a sort of painting, capturing the time in which COVID-19 hit the U.S. prison system, and thirteen writers found an outlet from their compounded isolation. On the home page, you can still see the GIF of COVID achieving total domination of the Earth. Some of the links, including those leading to the project’s GoFundMe, are now broken. There is an eerie sort of ghost town feel to the site. We learn nothing about the writers except for what they share in their pieces. The site does share contact information for several of the writers, but I ask myself if the information is still current four years later. I ask myself what has become of the email address or the eponymous P.O. box for submissions. The painting has finished, but have the subjects all dispersed?

Granted, all of these questions would be easy for me to answer, as I (plot twist) was the Web Developer for this particular project back in 2021. I had a limited contract with the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater) and left shortly after the Wax site was launched. As a (somewhat) detached reviewer four years later, I look at the minimalism of the site and wonder if some descriptions of the works could have been provided for accessibility’s sake. I wonder if more context could have been provided for each writer. As the developer, I recall the team embracing this minimalist concept to protect the writers’ identity. For example, the COVID responses were deliberately left anonymous so no one would face backlash for speaking out about what happened behind closed doors, and the PDF format was similarly embraced.

I don’t know if anyone is talking about P.O. Box 34 in 2025. Googling “P.O. Box 34” immediately results in the project’s page as well as an article from Penn Today a little further down in the results list. Further searching results in a blurb about the project from the Wolf Humanities Center and the same article as above published on the Annenberg School for Communication website. When Googling “prison writing” on the other hand, the site does not appear. I remember hearing from co-creator Erika after the site deployed. She had shared the website with several of the writers, who were ecstatic to see their work published on the internet. I believe that it depends upon those of us who were involved in the project to share it, to ensure that the writers’ words aren’t swept away into the refuse of the internet. Their voices are worth hearing, and I implore you to take the time to listen.

How are the collaborative aspects reflected in the project and are there elements that work particularly well?

The project itself was born of collaboration - from the grants and GoFundMe that powered the project to the interchange between the writers and project administrator / student mentors to the interchange between the readers and the writers. The project also hosted the animated films that the writers contributed to the Hidden Lives Illuminated project, which was produced by Eastern State Penitentiary.

Do you see an opportunity for collaboration that would be helpful to the project?

The American Prison Writing Archive and Prison Activist Resource Center would both be fine digital spaces to share P.O. Box 34 and keep its memory alive. The site could also be linked on the Eastern State Penitentiary website.