Research at AAS

Catherine Sasanov was a 2016 Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. There she conducted research for her book-length poem, in-progress, Markd Y (Archives & Invocations). She is the author of Traditions of Bread and Violence (Four Way Books, 1996), All the Blood Tethers (Northeasten UP, 2002), and Had Slaves (Firewheel Editions, 2010). Most recently, her essay, "The Will, the Woman, and the Archive", was published in the anthology Slavery's Descendants (Rutgers, 2019). Her current project, The Last & Living Words of Mark, has been funded by a 2019-2020 fellowship from New England Regional Fellowship Consortium. In the video above, Sasanov discusses her residency at AAS and reads her poem “Snow Globe (April, 18, 1775) Revere Speaks.” Written from the perspective of Paul Revere, trapped forever on his Midnight Ride, the poem meditates in part on an incident with an enslaved child mentioned in the American Antiquarian Society’s Hugh Hall Papers, 1718-1743. In the poem, Sasanov also juxtaposes Revere’s story with that of the hanged man Revere will forever be riding by: Mark, who after murdering his enslaver in 1755, was executed, gibbeted, and hung by the side of the Cambridge Road.

Click the image above to read Catherine Sasanov's statement of poetic research for her work Markd Y (Archives & Invocations), which was previously published in Commonplace.