Amistad Poetry

On Friday we were honored to hear the distinguished poet Elizabeth Alexander share her Amistad epic with us. (You can read it all in this article.) I thought she was wonderful and hope you did too!  As I told you already, I first got to know this remarkable poem when Natasha Trethewey was at Dalton a couple of years ago. After sharing some of it with us, she helped us create a persona poem using the following description of Margru (from one of the original profiles of the Amisated captives in John Barber’s book).

Margru

What I remember of home is this:

green – green mangoes, green snakes, green bananas:
brown – my mother, my father, myself, the tree
trunks, the brown earth, the color of my language,
Mende,
the only language I had
to describe these things.

Often I think of
how I came to be here:

my father pawning me, waving goodbye,
his face crumpled, tightened, looking
away from me.

I felt my captor’s white, cold hand
tighten around my wrist as if
he were a solid ghost taking me away.

Now I wish to see again
the green rice fields,
my father’s brown face,
clouds in the sky —
the only white things,

to hear someone speaking my language,
someone saying

Margru.

*******

Now I hope you will be inspired to create your own poems. Take a look at the Amistad captive profiles here. Perhaps you want to do a persona poem about one of them?  Or a found poem (taking words from another place as she did with  “Other Cargo”) ? Or something else?

Write your poem as you wish. Revise. Proofread. Show a teacher.

Then create a collage with your poem in it. Here are some from an earlier to give you an idea where to go. (Of course, I hope yours are completely unique and different!)

Finally, you will scan in your poem, post it on your blog, and I will put all the collages on the bulletin board outside the classroom!