M. NourbeSe Philip

Zong! #12

Language: english

Translations: german (Zong! #12)

Zong! #12

it

  is said

  has been decided

  was justified

  appeared impossible

  is not necessary

  is another ground

need not be proved

it

was a throwing overboard

  it

  is a particular circumstance

  need not be proved

  is another ground

  is not necessary

  appeared impossible

was justified

has been decided

is said

it

was

___________________
Oni Sanura Mashama Sigolwide Shamfa
Mhonum Ajike Odunmbaku Maizah Oku Lizige

M. NourbeSe Philip

photo © gezett.de

* 03.02.1947, Moriah, Trinidad and Tobago
lives in: Toronto, Canada

M. NourbeSe Philip (born in 1947 in Moriah, Trinidad and Tobago) is a lawyer and writer. She writes poems, novels, stage plays and essays which are repeatedly critical of racism and sexism.
She became well-known for her third collection of poems She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, which was acclaimed by critics as a “linguistic and feminist Odyssey” (Phil Hall, Books in Canada).

Her book Zong! (2008) is a masterpiece of Appropriation Art, a long poem using just the words from an 18th Century legal report dealing with the violent deaths of 150 Africans on a slave ship. Philip dissects the text, compresses it and erases certain words. What emerges from this is a language that grunts and groans and stutters. The musical composition principle that underlies Zong! oscillates between the polyphonous structure of a fugue and the expressive rhythms of the Afro-American dance Krumping.

photo © gezett.de

M. NourbeSe Philip lives and works in Canada.

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