Self-emancipation by Walking into the blackest night Becoming the river Running into the textAcquiring English as a Second LanguageAs a third, a fourth, a fifth Filing for one’s freedom in the courts of Massachusetts In the courts of New Hampshire In the courts of Rhode Island In the court of one’s mind In the court of one’s body Through the course of one’s body Through the course of one body And the newness of the dayFeigning fullness With childLoving one’s childKilling one’s child with the red hand of SalvationKilling one’s owner Working slowly Spreading rumors Breaking tools Dancing how you know Orishas on the shoulders MarryingDisappearing into another selfDisappearing into another raceWitnessing Never sayingTarrying and SuicideSpying Telling the Truth Sowing itReadingWritingDeclaring Dignity and BeautyAnd Sordid Avarice Uttering: Our wretchedness in consequence of slavery Our wretchedness in consequence of ignorance Our wretchedness in consequence of the preacher of the religion of jesus christ Our wretchedness in consequence of the colonizing scheme Setting fire to the house Walking a ruin of cinders TestifyingBuying oneselfOwning property LivingBuying kinLiving Living
Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England
Poem contains words (italicized) from and titles of the 4 articles of David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829).
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“Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England” from Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England by Danielle Legros Georges.
Published by Staircase Books on June 10, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Danielle Legros Georges.
All rights reserved.
Jennifer Waddell
Danielle Legros Georges (1964-2025) was a poet, translator, anthologist, and editor whose work was supported by fellowships and grants from organizations including the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Boston Foundation, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. Her chapbook Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England was published by Staircase Books (2025); her most recent full-length collection, Three Leaves, Three Roots: Poems on the Haiti–Congo Story, was published by Beacon Press (2025). Her other books of poetry include The Dear Remote Nearness of You (Barrow Street Press, 2016), winner of the New England Poetry Club’s 2016 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize; and Maroon (Curbstone Books, 2001). She is the translator of the anthology Blue Flare: Three Haitian Poets: Évelyne Trouillot, Marie-Célie Agnant, Maggy de Coster (Zephyr Press, 2024) and of Island Heart: The Poems of Ida Faubert (Subpress Collective, 2021). Legros Georges is the coeditor, with Artress Bethany White, of Wheatley at 250: Black Women Poets Re-imagine the Verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters (Pangyrus, 2023), and editor of City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems (Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, 2017). Danielle Legros Georges was born in Haiti, raised in Boston, and earned an undergraduate degree from Emerson College before joining the Dark Room Collective. She later received an MFA in poetry from New York University. She was Professor Emerita of Creative Writing in the MFA Program at Lesley University and taught in the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences Writer’s Workshop, at the University of Massachusetts Boston for more than a decade. In 2015, Legros Georges was named Boston’s second poet laureate, serving in the role until 2019. In 2016, she was awarded an honorary degree of doctor of humane letters by Emerson College, and in 2024, she was inducted into the American Antiquarian Society and named a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France’s Ministry of Culture. She lived in Boston until her passing on February 11, 2025. More at DanielleLegrosGeorges.com.
"In Danielle Legros Georges’ work, the dead dance across the page in light. Using found text and the voice of 'Africans Themselves in New England' Legros Georges crafts lyrics in ode to resistance. She weaves defiance with the poetics and does not shy from the truth and horror of slavery. Afterall, Danielle Legros Georges makes it clear: this body of work is not about the inhumane but rather, it is the lyrical documentation of overt resistance and the declaration of life from Black and African folks who were enslaved. In couplets enriched in imagery, Legros Georges beckons us to remember. In each poem, breath is offered and suspended. My god—these poems—this poet."
—Porsha Olayiwola
"Danielle Legros-Georges’ Acts of Resistance to New England Slavery by Africans Themselves in New England is a powerful and lyrical reckoning with the often-overlooked narratives of Black resistance in the North. Through a series of searing, evocative poems, Legros-Georges breathes life into historical figures like Elizabeth Freeman, Crispus Attucks, and Phillis Wheatley, illuminating their acts of defiance, self-making, and self-liberation. The collection reclaims the stories of those who resisted through legal battles, rebellion, survival, and sheer will, transforming archival records into haunting, and necessary verse. With a poet’s ear for rhythm and a historian’s eye for detail, Acts of Resistance is an essential meditation on the specter of enslavement, the unwashable stains of history, the fundamental poignancy of human agency, and the many forms of freedom-seeking that shaped early America. This chapbook is an archival 'green field of imagining.'"
—Patrick Sylvain
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