Sonia Sanchez (1934-present) is a Black poet and author from Birmingham, Alabama whose writings heavily influenced the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. Working alongside famous poets like Amiri Bakara and Nikki Giovanni, Sanchez’s poems often blended blues rhythms and Black English Vernacular to create stirring, haunting poems about the African-American experience in the United States.

Sanchez has written more than a dozen volumes of poetry, six plays, and five children’s books. Sanchez won a wde variety of awards and honors, from the Frost Medal to the Pew Fellowship for the Arts, and has lectured extensively across the U.S. Her poetry and prose continue to influence literature and politics today, and her lasting impact has inspired generations of artists. The following poems, Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman, honor the life and contributions of Harriet Tubman, an African American woman who helped enslaved people escape through the Underground Railroad. She was also the first African American woman to serve in the military, serving as a nurse and spy for the Union Army.

Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman:

By: Sonia Sanchez
1
Picture a woman
riding thunder on
the legs of slavery…
2
Picture her kissing
our spines saying no to
The eyes of slavery…
3
Picture her rotating
the earth into a shape
of lives becoming…
4
Picture her leaning
into the eyes of our
birth clouds…
5
Picture this woman
saying no to the constant
yes of slavery…
6
Picture a woman
jumping rivers her
legs inhaling moons…
7
Picture her ripe
with seasons of
legs… running…
8
Picture her tasting
the secret corners
of woods…
9
Picture her saying: You have within you the strength,
the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars,
to change the world    …
10
Imagine her words:
Every great dream begins
with a dreamer    …
11
Imagine her saying:
I freed a thousand slaves,
could have freed
a thousand more if they
only knew they were slaves    …
12
Imagine her humming:
How many days we got
fore we taste freedom    …
13
Imagine a woman
asking: How many workers
for this freedom quilt …
14
Picture her saying:
A live runaway could do
great harm by going back
but a dead runaway
could tell no secrets …
15
Picture the daylight
bringing her to woods
full of birth moons …
16
Picture John Brown
shaking her hands three times saying:
General Tubman. General Tubman.
General Tubman.
17
Picture her words:
There’s two things I got a
right to: death or liberty    …
18
Picture her saying no
to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
I am the real thing …
19
Picture a Black woman:
could not read or write
trailing freedom refrains …
20
Picture her face
turning southward walking
down a Southern road    …
21
Picture this woman
freedom bound … tasting a
people’s preserved breath …
22
Picture this woman
of royalty    …    wearing a crown
of morning air …
23
Picture her walking,
running, reviving
a country’s breath …
24
Picture black voices
leaving behind

lost tongues…