From These Roots
Selected Poems
Published on 16. March 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
122 pages
978-1-961938-27-4 (ISBN)
Description
The selected poems included in From These Roots chronicles Georgette Norman's well-lived life through keen-eyed observations about love, politics, race, and all the many joys and sorrows of surviving each day with grace and self-reflection. Tackling a wide range of subjects from the personal to the political to the communal to the cultural to the historical, Norman provides us an eyewitness account of the last eight decades of her life in poems that are lyrically beautiful, clever, and unwilling to turn a blind eye or hold their tongues. This is the work of a woman who has seen some things, and her poems vibrate off the page as if they have been waiting a long time to have their say.
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Person
Georgette M. Norman is a writer of prose and poetry (for mental gymnastics and peace of mind) since childhood. She has published in several issues of the Cruzan Satellite, a 1986 anthology of new poets; Catalyst, a magazine of heart and mind, Salon literary arts magazine; and First Draft, the journal of the Alabama Writer's Forum. In 1986 she completed a Black woman's calendar/appointment book chronicling the achievements of Black women; a two-year calendar was published in 1991. In 1993 she self-published her first book of poems, From These Roots, Poems by Georgette Norman. Georgette founded and served as executive director of the Alabama African American Arts Alliance under the auspices of the Alabama State Council of the Arts and was the first director of Troy University's Rosa Parks Museum. She sees herself as an observer and active participant in life and believes each person's life to be their self-portrait, their masterpiece.