African American Slavery: Haiku Collection

Type: Visiting Fellow

Crystal Smith's project will result in a full-length collection of slave haiku (American slavery). She will be accessing Duke libraries archives and archivists in the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture. She is interested in the cultural exploration of the linkage between Japanese poetic forms and African American poetics, specifically in traditional and contemporary haiku about slavery. This research will emphasize linkages in the haiku practice as it pertains the haiku principles of accessibility, brevity, and accuracy to achieve—as Roland Barthes describes—piercing meaning.