Sylvia Hamilton's latest poetry collection Tender imagines the overlooked lives of Black Nova Scotians
Sylvia Hamilton dedicates herself to recalling and reclaiming forgotten lives, especially the lives of Black people in Nova Scotia. Through her films and poetry, including her poetry collection And I Alone Escaped to Tell You, Hamilton chronicles the history of Black Canadians in Nova Scotia.
Her latest poetry collection, Tender, mixes historical, imagined and personal experiences to paint a moving portrait of her home province, Black resilience and the power of documenting one's story.
Hamilton spoke to The Next Chapter's Shelagh Rogers about writing Tender.
The first section is called Thursday Forever African Book of Testimony. It features a woman named Thursday Forever African. She appeared in your last book and in your author's notes, you write that you've been talking with her. Who is Thursday Forever African, and how do you walk with her?
Thursday was a young Black girl who was enslaved in Nova Scotia in the 1700s. She did appear in my first book; it was after I read a newspaper ad that described her. Her so-called owner wanted to recapture her so he placed an ad in the Halifax paper in about 1772, wanting her back.
She was in my first book and she's continued to be with me. I always wondered what had happened to her after she was left in a will. I decided I really needed to think more about her because she's been, I suppose, in some ways, haunting me or sitting with me.
I decided I needed to listen and therefore, created another world for her.
What was that like for you?
I would close my eyes and would think about the conditions at that time. What might she have done? What might I have done? I thought a lot about traveling and flying and moving to different locations, and I thought that's what Thursday did? She absconded. She left and decided that she wanted to explore but then was compelled to come back.
[It was] a flight of my imagination — to think of a different world and a different life for her.- Sylvia Hamilton
She'd given herself a new name and a new life and then she decided she wanted to come back and help others and begin recording their stories. [It was] a flight of my imagination — to think of a different world and a different life for her.
There's also a woman named July Hamilton, who is a war refugee survivor of the War of 1812, who came to Halifax. She shares your last name. What is her story?
I don't know a lot about July Hamilton other than that she came to Nova Scotia on one of the transport ships. She was someone who had knowledge of medicine; otherwise, the record is pretty silent. I've dug around and looked at other archival documents trying to find her and I wasn't able to.
I don't have a direct line of descendant ascendancy from her but she was a Hamilton and likely enslaved along with other Hamiltons who came to Nova Scotia on a plantation in Georgia so I claim her as another ancestor.- Sylvia Hamilton
The fact that she had an experience with medicine really intrigued me and the fact that she did bear the name Hamilton. My ancestors were Hamiltons from that refugee survivor migration into Nova Scotia. I don't have a direct line of descendant ascendancy from her but she was a Hamilton and likely enslaved along with other Hamiltons who came to Nova Scotia on a plantation in Georgia so I claim her as another ancestor. I decided that she was going to help Thursday in recording the many stories of the people who were coming to her.
The second section of Tender is called The Women Among Them. In these poems, you recall times, places and people from your own life. How do you see the women that you capture in these poems?
In these poems, I thought a lot about actually bringing forward some of the women from the earlier section because we live in a time right now when the lives of women are still at peril and that was no different than the stories of women's lives that I imagine Thursday and July captured.
When I began thinking about the women in my own generation and even the generation above me, I realized that they, too, were seeking a transformation of some kind. They were seeking a way to just live their own lives unencumbered — to make their choices, to be able to live and to laugh.
We live in a time right now when the lives of women are still at peril and that was no different than the stories of women's lives that I imagine Thursday and July captured.- Sylvia Hamilton
In those stories, those women had a lot to say and perhaps like Thursday, I walked with them. I sat with them. I thought a lot about them and their stories. Their voices were very present for me.
Sylvia, why did you choose the title, Tender?
Tender is a title that came to me early on and I wasn't sure I was going to use it. Then, as I began to write different pieces, I thought a lot about its multiple meanings. Tender being something that can be sweet and something that is very fragile. You touch it very tenderly.
Then I began to realize in the historical research, these small vessels that were used to shunt materials and people out to the larger ships — that collapse of those meanings really struck me as something that would be a way to perhaps encapsulate some of the ideas that I was grappling with in this collection.
As I began to write different pieces, I thought a lot about its multiple meanings. Tender being something that can be sweet and something that is very fragile. You touch it very tenderly.- Sylvia Hamilton
The notion of something being too tender, like you're bruised, you're hurt and so you have to be very careful. For me, it has those multiple meanings and I think it was a way for me to again encapsulate some of the ideas and the underlying themes of the book.
Hamilton's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Interview produced by Lisa Mathews, Shelagh Rogers and Jacqueline Kirke.
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