Erasing Frankenstein

Remaking the Monster, A Public Humanities Prison Arts Project

Elizabeth Effinger

• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781771126205
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Who gets to write poetry? Whose voices are made public? Whose voices are heeded?


Erasing Frankenstein showcases a creative exchange between federally incarcerated women and members of the prison education think tank Walls to Bridges Collective at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario, and graduate and undergraduate students from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Working collaboratively by long-distance mail, the artists and contributors made the first-ever poetic adaptation of Frankenstein, turning it into a book-length erasure poem, I or Us. An example of “found art,” an erasure poem is created by erasing or blacking out words in an existing text; what is left is the poem. The title reflects the nature of the project: participants have worked as “I”’s, each creating their own erased pages, but together worked as an “us” to create a collaged “monster” of a book.


Erasing Frankenstein presents the original erasure poem I or Us alongside reflections from participants on the experience.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Meet the Monster: I or Us by the Erasing Frankenstein Collective
• I or Us
• Chapter 1: The Harms of Incarceration and the Transformative Potentiality of Art: Reflections from Experiential Knowledge
• Chapter 2: “Harm Asks Questions of Me”: On the Practice and Ethics of Erasure Poetry
• Chapter 3 The Composite Art and Carceral Aesthetics of I or Us
• Chapter 4: Embracing the “Workshop of Filthy Creation”: Frankenstein, Failure, and the Public Humanities
• Afterword
• Further Reading
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index