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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.
Price: $24.95
Pages: 104
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Publication Date:
16 May 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781478031819
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“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
"Crystal Simone Smith’s work reminds us that art and poetry are not only something to be admired as beautiful but can bear witness to truths we as a society might, unfortunately, be forgetting too soon."—Olivia Camara, Duke Chronicle
"Runagate is a powerful, innovative collection. . . . Smith’s work brings readers a deeper understanding of this terrible part of America’s history while simultaneously creating new approaches to the haiku and tanka forms."—Ce Rosenow, Valley Voices
"The ultimate gift . . . is Smith’s use of structured Japanese poetic forms to dissect the logic of American slavery and its racial dynamics."—Sheila Smith McKoy, North Carolina Literary Review
“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
"Crystal Simone Smith’s work reminds us that art and poetry are not only something to be admired as beautiful but can bear witness to truths we as a society might, unfortunately, be forgetting too soon."—Olivia Camara, Duke Chronicle
"Runagate is a powerful, innovative collection. . . . Smith’s work brings readers a deeper understanding of this terrible part of America’s history while simultaneously creating new approaches to the haiku and tanka forms."—Ce Rosenow, Valley Voices
"The ultimate gift . . . is Smith’s use of structured Japanese poetic forms to dissect the logic of American slavery and its racial dynamics."—Sheila Smith McKoy, North Carolina Literary Review
Crystal Simone Smith is Instructor of the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and author of Dark Testament: Blackout Poems.
Foreword / Ce Rosenow xiii
Prefatory Note xix
Prologue. Runagate: What to the Slave Is the Semiquincentennial? 1
Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People
Haiku Sequences
Henry & Maria 5
Jemmy 7
Lucy 9
Asko or Glasgow 11
Clinton 13
Jack (and Paul) 15
Peter 17
Dave 19
Grace (and Tom) 21
Mariah Frances 23
Peggy 25
John Bull 27
Austin 29
Ely or July 31
Robbin 33
Sam 35
Anderson 37
Emily 39
Harriett, Bella, Elsey, and Milly 41
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 1
Tanka
hard worked days 44
one pair of shoes 45
we spent nights 46
for breaking dishes 47
oh my brother’s 48
dead slave woman 49
the worst sales— 50
hit in the head 51
our mama cooked 52
Mistress Mary was kind 53
I was awakened 54
day the Yankees came 55
I had sixteen children 56
Smithfield slave market 57
allowed no pleasures 58
Master made me go 59
we worked winter 60
Christmas Eve 61
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 2
Tanka Sequences
Ain’t You My Child 64
After the Stars Fell 66
Confederate Lieutenant Robert Walsh 68
Joe High 69
Sarah Anne Green 70
Essex Henry 72
Epilogue. Haibun for Ancestor Ernestine Turner (b. 1827) 75
Acknowledgments 77
Freedom on the Move: A Note 79
Prefatory Note xix
Prologue. Runagate: What to the Slave Is the Semiquincentennial? 1
Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People
Haiku Sequences
Henry & Maria 5
Jemmy 7
Lucy 9
Asko or Glasgow 11
Clinton 13
Jack (and Paul) 15
Peter 17
Dave 19
Grace (and Tom) 21
Mariah Frances 23
Peggy 25
John Bull 27
Austin 29
Ely or July 31
Robbin 33
Sam 35
Anderson 37
Emily 39
Harriett, Bella, Elsey, and Milly 41
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 1
Tanka
hard worked days 44
one pair of shoes 45
we spent nights 46
for breaking dishes 47
oh my brother’s 48
dead slave woman 49
the worst sales— 50
hit in the head 51
our mama cooked 52
Mistress Mary was kind 53
I was awakened 54
day the Yankees came 55
I had sixteen children 56
Smithfield slave market 57
allowed no pleasures 58
Master made me go 59
we worked winter 60
Christmas Eve 61
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 2
Tanka Sequences
Ain’t You My Child 64
After the Stars Fell 66
Confederate Lieutenant Robert Walsh 68
Joe High 69
Sarah Anne Green 70
Essex Henry 72
Epilogue. Haibun for Ancestor Ernestine Turner (b. 1827) 75
Acknowledgments 77
Freedom on the Move: A Note 79