The Halifax Explosion
6 December 1917 at 9:05 in the Morning
- Publisher
- Plumleaf Press Inc., Plumleaf Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2023
- Category
- General, General
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781778242809
- Publish Date
- Oct 2023
- List Price
- $24.95
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Where to buy it
Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels
- Age: 9 to 12
- Grade: 4 to 7
Description
The Halifax Explosion is a poem written by Halifax’s seventh poet laureate, Dr. Afua Cooper. It reveals dramatically what happened on 6 December 1917 at 9:05 when two ships carrying munitions and war supplies collided in the Halifax Harbour. The poem shows the tragic toll the resulting explosion and fire took on the residents of Halifax and the surrounding area, which stretched all the way north to Africville. Dr. Cooper commemorates the Halifax Explosion through verse and highlights the experiences of the Black Haligonians in this disaster. Her powerful words are magnified in this book with dramatic historical photographs and poignant art.
Poetry is movement, poetry is politics, it’s everything. It fires the imagination and so that excites me because in firing the imagination then we produce a new world.
—Dr. Afua Cooper
About the authors
Afua Cooper's doctoral dissertation on Henry Bibb is a pioneering work on the life of the 19th-century abolitionist. She teaches African-Canadian history at the University of Toronto and is co-author of "We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up": Essays in African Canadian Women's History (University of Toronto Press, 1994). In February 2002, Afua curated "A Glimpse of Black Life in Victorian Toronto: 1850-1860" for the City of Toronto Museum Division. An award-winning poet, her fifth book of poetry, Copper Woman and Other Poems, is being published by Natural Heritage in the spring of 2006. Her most recent book is The Hanging Of Angelique: Canada, Slavery and the Burning of Montreal, published by HarperCollins Canada in January 2006.
Excerpt: The Halifax Explosion: 6 December 1917 at 9:05 in the Morning (by (author) Afua Cooper; illustrated by Bender Rebecca)
i>The Halifax Explosion is a poem written by Halifax’s seventh poet laureate, Dr. Afua Cooper. It reveals dramatically through powerful images what happened on 6 December 1917 at 9:05 am when two ships, the Mont-Blanc, carrying munitions, and the Imo, carrying war supplies, collided in the Halifax Harbour. The poem shows the tragic toll the resulting explosion and fire took on the residents of Halifax and the surrounding area, which stretched all the way north to Africville. It also shows the personal heroics of many, despite long-term and continuing racism and discrimination suffered by the African Nova Scotian community.
Afua Cooper commemorates the Halifax Explosion through verse and highlights the experiences of the Black Haligonians in this disaster. Her powerful words are magnified in this book with dramatic historical photographs and eloquent art.
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