The regulars know that nothing is allowed into prison. No paper, no pens, no books, no jewelry, no purses or wallets, no cell phones — nothing that is a tangible reminder of an outside world now locked away.

Nothing, that is, except for one thing insisted upon by writing teachers Pat Clough of the Prison Writing Project and Marisa Proctor of La Pietra-Hawaii School for Girls: a box of Kleenex. Inevitably, as both the women in prison and the high school girls look inward, there will be tears.

Crying, said Clough, "can be a beautiful thing. It means your words matter."

Clough and Proctor have forged a poetic experiment. Clough has taught creative writing for years, using themes and rigorous self-analysis so that prisoners grow to know themselves. It’s part of civic rehabilitation.

With Proctor, a question was posed to her La Pietra students this year: What is the value of time? The girls, intrigued by the very different life of those incarcerated at the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua, began corresponding with the prisoners, challenging each other to open up through the vehicle of poetry.

The result is a sixth volume of "Hulihia: Writings from Prison and Beyond," an annual journal of poetry. This year the theme was "Time," and the students and prisoners read works to one another at a prison workshop Thursday. It was the first time the entire women’s prison population was invited.

Earlier in the week, Clough and Proctor prepared the La Pietra girls for public speaking.

"Really feel the words and don’t rush," advised Clough. "The last thing you should do is whip through your poem. The people you were writing to are listening. Give them time to digest their thoughts.

Senior Elizabeth Hirata crafted some of the compelling poems in the collection, although, like most teenagers, she’s a bit tongue-tied explaining herself. "Creative writing — it’s a good way to vent about my horribleness," she sighed. "I thought of people in prison as bad people, as horrible people, not people who made bad choices and have to work through them. I felt … mean. Once I met them, I feel different. The world’s not as simple as I thought it would be."

As Hirata wrote in "Untitled": Sit back and admire your work / The curling s and the strong dots above your i / Follow the line of words from the beginning / And you feel something wrong / Everything started out so nicely in the beginning / So perfect and neat and … / And at the end they’re so messy and disgusting …"

Everyone, she suggests, is a blank sheet of paper at the beginning of a life’s arc.

OK, poetry is cheap psychotherapy, Hirata admits. "But I was not good about writing about myself. It was, like, a false me. Me, trying to be an ‘author.’ With the inmates, though, I found it easier to be my true self. I could be more honest."

The journal is the result of 12 weeks of class, said Clough, and many inmates repeat the course. "In fact, I encourage them to. It takes a while. You have to assimilate knowledge about yourself to transform," she said.

"And they feel shame. That’s a start. It’s the beginning of inner freedom. To understand what led them to the place they’re in. It’s all the result of a process. And, frankly, they’re the best students I’ve ever had."

She calls the writing classes a "beautiful laboratory."

"Like T.S. Eliot wrote, ‘We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ I get to be there when that happens for these women! It’s humbling when someone shares their shattered life with you."

Proctor said that when the two groups starting the exchange, "the kids were a little scared but curious. Why were these women in prison? The project helped humanize the prison population for our girls; they reached out and discovered they had much in common, that there were parallel tracks in what was expected of them."