Runagate

Crystal Simone Smith is Instructor of the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and author of Dark Testament: Blackout Poems.

• Foreword / Ce Rosenow  xiiiPrefatory Note  xixPrologue. Runagate: What to the Slave Is the Semiquincentennial?  1Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating PeopleHaiku SequencesHenry & Maria  5Jemmy  7Lucy  9Asko or Glasgow  11Clinton  13Jack (and Paul)  15Peter  17Dave  19Grace (and Tom)  21Mariah Frances  23Peggy  25John Bull  27Austin  29Ely or July  31Robbin  33Sam  35Anderson  37Emily  39Harriett, Bella, Elsey, and Milly  41Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 1Tankahard worked days  44one pair of shoes  45we spent nights  46for breaking dishes  47oh my brother’s  48dead slave woman  49the worst sales-  50hit in the head  51our mama cooked  52Mistress Mary was kind  53I was awakened  54day the Yankees came  55I had sixteen children  56Smithfield slave market  57allowed no pleasures  58Master made me go  59we worked winter  60Christmas Eve  61Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 2Tanka SequencesAin’t You My Child  64After the Stars Fell  66Confederate Lieutenant Robert Walsh  68Joe High  69Sarah Anne Green  70Essex Henry  72Epilogue. Haibun for Ancestor Ernestine Turner (b. 1827)  75Acknowledgments  77Freedom on the Move: A Note  79

“Runagate is a collection of poems that looks the harsh truths of slavery in the eye and turns its savagery into sorrow songs and temples of beauty. Crystal Simone Smith refuses to abstract the dead. She illuminates our human capacities to be virtuous or lethal, to still ourselves or steal our freedom. Her artful narratives about slavery are powerfully imagined because the poet deals in facts and truths about American slavery that few have told with this much clarity.” - Timothy B. Tyson, author of The Blood of Emmett Till “In this engaging experiment in archive interpretation and poetic form, Crystal Simone Smith centers the voices of freedom seekers and survivors of US chattel enslavement with an intimacy and simplicity that gives these ancestors room to breathe. Each poem quiets the reader and bids them to listen longer.” - Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde “Crystal Simone Smith’s poetry sparkles with clarity-haiku allows nothing less. She offers searing attention to the wounds of the past. The imagery and formal look of each poem on the page also reveal her gifts as a visual artist. Here are poems our ancestors deserve.” - Tsitsi Jaji, author of Mother Tongues “The voices of the ransomed African Americans that Crystal Simone Smith reclaims in Runagate are resolutely alive. Smith captures the emotive and embodying possibilities of haiku and tanka to invite readers to reckon with their rejection of ‘the laws of slavery’ and invite us to imagine their lives beyond the confines of the posters and capture notices that once held their histories. This is the poetry of destiny, revealing Smith’s grasp of the infinite possibilities of formal poetics and of the living spirits who dared to claim freedom for themselves and for those of us who are blessed to hear their stories.” - Sheila Smith McKoy, author of The Bones Beneath "This book is a singular achievement by one of our best poets. It is also a powerful collaboration between the poet, her colleagues who helped with the manuscript, the documentarians who collected the advertisements and narratives, and the ancestors who lived these stories and passed them on to us." - Dave Russo North Carolina Haiku Society