Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature by Caroline Brewer

Caroline Brewer, author and illustrator of Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature explains why she wrote Harriet’s biography using poetry!

I wrote Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature in poems because Harriet herself was/is poetry.

When I think of Harriet, I think imagery.

I think of word association and sound.

Her life, like poetry, bursts with rhetorical bombs.

 

Like poetry, Harriet is the epitome of communion and community,

oneness with the creator and creativity.

 

I wrote Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature in poems because Harriet, like all free and enslaved Africans and African Americans, spoke using indirect language, codes, and metaphors. Words, phrases, songs, prophecies, and proverbs that open and close doors. That beckon you to get on board the linguistic train. To embrace the teasing, testing, semantic play in your brain.

 

Like poetry.

 

That fluid, dynamic animation, and activation of often brutal or mundane realities, overcome by the intersection of intellectuality and spirituality.

A mass communication system that makes love and war, that settles big and small scores, that tricks and treats, that is set to distinct rhythms and beats,

that dreams dreams and brings them to life, soothing and silencing all sorts of strife, providing solace and sanctuary as sweet, bold, and Black as the juice of the blackberry.

I wrote Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature in poems because Harriet’s life and legacy sing freedom with an urgency, insisting that clutching liberty’s hand is an emergency.

 

Like poetry, and nature, Harriet was born to be free.

To be happy in the pursuit of sovereignty.

To be unchained, limitless, unbossed.

To be independent, autonomous, whatever the cost.

 

Poetry has 168 forms and counting.

Each allows us to feel, feel, feel the tension and treasure mounting.

Odes, elegies, haikus, concrete poems, and rhymes.

Limericks, ballads, couplets, and sonnets commanding 14 lines.

Studies show that rhymes are the closest things to a mother’s heartbeat.

They are comfortable, predictable, confidence-building feats.

Perfect for the children, allowing them to rise, like they’ve got wings enough to fly.

 

So sit down, take off your shoes, and relax

as you savor the force of Harriet in poems, in 32… delicious acts.

 

Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature: A Biography in Poems by Caroline Brewer. 9781804661437. 4 September 2025. What on Earth! www.whatonearthbook.com