Making Up For Lost Time

Former inmate finds success as a poet.

By Beth Cavanaugh, Terp Magazine

Before Reginald “Dwayne” Betts ’09 had completed his bachelor’s degree in English and literature, he had published his memoir, was one year into an M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College, and was married with a young son.

Betts says he had a lot of time to make up after spending eight years in prison.

At the age of 16, he held a handgun for the first time and carjacked a sleeping driver in a mall parking lot. With his first offense, the honor roll student was sentenced as an adult.  

Yet Betts never doubted he’d go to college, despite the fact that he’d be the first in his family to earn a degree. “I knew I had no blueprint, but I also knew I had nothing to lose,” he says.

Betts came of age in his cell, learning to survive in an unforgiving place, and discovering poetry. At first, he read as much as he could—Etheridge Knight, Robert Hayden, Sonia Sanchez—then he began to write as well.

“My poems don’t come from inspiration,” Betts says. “The ideas come from the world and arguments I am having with myself.”

Betts enrolled at Prince George’s Community College and after two years earned a scholarship to Maryland. At a summer writers’ conference, Betts met Michael Collier, an English professor at Maryland. The two bonded, and Collier discovered Betts was an intuitive and disciplined writer. 

At Maryland, where Collier was a mentor, Betts went on to earn nearly
perfect grades and won a full scholarship to pursue his master’s in North Carolina.

Betts, who has been researching and writing about juvenile justice since his days in prison, began speaking and lecturing on the topic and was named the national spokesman for the Campaign for Youth Justice. More recently, President Obama appointed him to a three-year term on the Federal Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

“The last line of one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems reminds me of Dwayne: ‘You must change your life.’ Not only has he changed his own life, but he has helped transform others’ lives as well,” says Collier.

Not one to sit still, Betts recently completed a prestigious Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University and won a $15,000 2012 Lilly Poetry Fellowship. He published his second book, a collection of poems, in 2010, awaits publication of two more books and hopes to begin law school this year.