Crystal Simone Smith’s new poetry collection, Runagate, reimagines the experiences of enslaved and formerly enslaved persons in a stark and chilling response to the archives of chattel slavery: bills of sale, interviews, narratives, and fugitive runaway ads. Embodying the aesthetics and Japanese poetic forms haiku and tanka, her poems bear witness to the brutal and horrifying treatment of enslaved people and contrast their humanity with the inhumanity of their enslavers. In these poems, fugitive persons evade slave patrol hounds by climbing magnolia trees, use the cover of night and the detritus of a shipwreck to swim to freedom, and find temporary refuge in a cabin where a woman offers bread and water. Throughout, Smith poignantly envisions their flights to freedom—passages that were fueled by love, hope, and impossible dreams. She unceasingly gives voice to those who found courage in both bondage and freedom. In Runagate, the enslaved regain their stories and return to the sensory world.
- Cover
- Contents
- Foreword / Ce Rosenow
- Prefatory Note
- Prologue. Runagate: What to the Slave Is the Semiquincentennial?
- Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People / Haiku Sequences
- Henry & Maria
- Jemmy
- Lucy
- Asko or Glasgow
- Clinton
- Jack (and Paul)
- Peter
- Dave
- Grace (and Tom)
- Mariah Frances
- Peggy
- John Bull
- Austin
- Ely or July
- Robbin
- Sam
- Anderson
- Emily
- Harriet, Bella, Elsey, and Milly
- Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 1 / Tanka
- Hard Worked days
- One Pair of Shoes
- We Spent Nights
- For Breaking Dishes
- Oh my Brother’s
- Dead Slave Woman
- The Worst Sales —
- Hit in the Head
- Our Mama Cooked
- Mistress Mary was kind
- I was Awakened
- Day the Yankees Came
- I Had Sixteen Children
- Smithfield Slave Market
- Allowed no Pleasures
- Master made me go
- We Worked Winter
- Christmas Eve
- Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 2 / Tanka Sequences
- Ain’t You My Child
- After the Stars Fell
- Confederate Lieutenant Robert Walsh
- Joe High
- Sarah Anne Green
- Essex Henry
- Epilogue. Haibun for Ancestor Ernestine Turner (b. 1827)
- Acknowledgments
- Freedom on the Move: A Note
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