When inmates of the infamous Guantanamo Bay U.S. detention center in Cuba wrote poetry behind bars, they did so with little expectation of it ever reaching a wide audience.

But thanks to the non-profit Actors and Poets Group of New York, the personal thoughts expressed in prisoners’ poems will be made public in a brand-new theatrical adaptation called “Voices From Guantanamo.”

The group’s mission is to encourage people to read by fostering interest and understanding of writers and poets. In order to accomplish that goal, they adapt non-dramatic works for the stage, using only the original text to craft theatrical pieces.

Guantanamo Bay is the controversial detainment center that has held more than 700 people for questioning, many unjustly, since the war in Afghanistan began in October 2001. Many of the prisoners were Arabs and/or Muslims.

The show begins on Friday, January 16 and runs each Friday through March 2009 at St. Veronica’s Church in Manhattan.

Actors and Poets founder Duane Mazey talked about the personal nature of the poems and the window they provide into a place not many people have seen.

“These poems reveal the human dimension of what is happening at Guantánamo,” said Mazey, “something which until recently has been almost completely obscured.”

It was a painstaking process to make the poems available, as it took convincing of Pentagon officials by volunteer lawyers to eventually get 22 pieces approved for distribution.

Some of the poems were even originally written in the detainment center on foam cups or scrawled down and then traced with toothpaste.

Many of them have already been published, as University of Iowa Press published the book “Poems From Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak,” in December 2007 with help from The Center For Constitutional Rights and Amnesty International.

Arab American composer Dave Hall of “Voices From Guantanamo” talked about the importance of the poems reaching new audiences in the United States.

“Voices from Guantanamo brings peoples’ attention to how the war is affecting non-Americans, which is very important.”

The show weaves the poems into a narrative that outlines the events leading up to each prisoner’s detention.

“The poems in this collection were written against enormous odds,” said Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK on the Actors and Poets group’s Web site. “The men in Guantanamo Bay are routinely held in solitary confinement, condemned without a fair trial, many of them tortured.

“Through it all, some have taken sanctuary in poetry…their poems are a remarkable and moving testament to the power of the human spirit.”

Tickets for the Manhattan, New York show can be purchased by calling 212.563.4191 and more information can be found at www.actorspoetsgroup.org.

The “Voices From Guantanamo” show features actual poetry from former detainees of the infamous camp. PHOTO Courtesy Andrew Marvel