The settlement of African peoples in Nova Scotia is a richly layered story encompassing many waves of settlement and diverse circumstances–from captives to ‘freedom runners’ who sailed north from the United States with hopes of establishing a new life. The poems in And I Alone Escaped to Tell You endeavour to give these historical events a human voice, blending documentary material, memory, experience and imagination to evoke the lives of these early Black Nova Scotians and of the generations that followed. This collection is a moving meditation on the place of African-descended people in the Canadian story and on the threads connecting all of us to the African diaspora.

Finalist for the 2015 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Poetry.

Sylvia D. Hamilton is a filmmaker and writer whose awards include a Gemini and the Portia White Prize. Her poetry has been published in The Dalhousie Review, West Coast Line, The Great Black North and Untying the Apron: Daughters Remember Mothers of the Fifties. She was a contributor to, and co-editor of, We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays In African Canadian Women’s History. She lives in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia.

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