Since 2014, MSU artist-educator Guillermo Delgado has brought poetry, zine-making, and yoga into mid-Michigan prisons, guiding incarcerated men and RCAH students through raw, transformative creative work that culminates each year in a competitive Poetry Slam. From haiku assignments to hard-won verses about fatherhood, loyalty, and redemption, discover how Delgado's Prison Poetry Zine Project helps incarcerated writers—like two-time slam champion Diarra Bryant—find their voice and "feel human again."

"Rituals to Seed Clouds with Crystals," showcased years of paintings, mandalas, and poetry born from Guillermo Delgado's prison poetry courses—art created by incarcerated students alongside RCAH peers, with no hierarchy between them. In this article, Delgado shares what this work has taught him about creativity, dignity, and meeting people where they are, offering a rare window into lives too often hidden from view.

Every Wednesday, Guillermo Delgado and RCAH students travel to Handlon Correctional Facility to lead a yoga class that offers incarcerated men something rare behind bars: choice, positivity, and a moment of shared humanity. Go inside the class one inmate calls "somewhere positive" in a place designed to be anything but.

Lansing City Pulse article about "Bridging Walls [-] Different Worlds," which showcased art and poetry by incarcerated Michigan artists. Guillermo Delgado, who has run creative writing workshops in prisons since 2014, contributes poems by men incarcerated at Handlon Correctional Facility—odes on everyday objects and slam poetry pieces designed into broadsheets by his research assistant Elena Forman. The exhibit, produced with the Prison Creative Arts Project, explored themes of freedom, reentry fear, and resilience through incarcerated artists' work.

MSU's Guillermo Delgado leads RCAH students into local prisons each week for a poetry course unlike any other—no phones, no screens, just face-to-face conversation, writing, and art with incarcerated men that Delgado says restores their sense of humanity.