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

© Weslyan University Press
From: Zong!
Middletown, CT, USA: Weslyan University Press, 2008
Audio production: Haus für Poesie, 2017
Categories: series / cycles, history, homeland, identity (collective), death / grief
The extended poetry cycle Zong! is based on a legal decision, at the end of the eighteenth century, related to the murder of Africans on board a slave ship. In November, 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered that some 150 Africans be mur

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.
Publications

  • Thorns

    [Poetry]

    1980

  • Salmon Courage

    [Poetry]

    1983

  • Harriet's Daughter

    [Novel]

    1988

  • She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks

    [Poetry]

    1989

  • Discourse on the Logic of Language

    [Poetry]

    1989

  • Looking for Livingstone

    An Odyssey of Silence

    [Novel]

    1991

  • Frontiers

    Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture

    1992

  • Showing Grit: Showboating North of the 44th Parallel

    [Essays]

    1993

  • Harriet und schwarz wie ich

    Roman

    Aus dem Englischen von Nina Schindler [in German]

    Kevelaer: Anrich, 1993

  • CARIBANA: African Roots and Continuities

    Race, Space and the Poetics of Moving

    1996

  • Genealogy of Resistance and Other Essays

    1997

  • Coups and Calypsos

    [Drama]

    1999

  • Harriet's Daughter

    [Drama]

    2000

  • Zong!

    [Poetry]

    Middletown, CT : Wesleyan University Press, 2008

  • Bla_k

    Essays and Interviews

    2017

Awards

  • 1998 Casa de las Americas prize for the manuscript version of the poetry book, She Tries Her Tongue...

  • 1988 Tradewinds Collective (Trinidad & Tobago): Poetry – 1st prize

  • 1988 Tradewinds Collective (Trinidad & Tobago): Short Story – 1st prize

  • 1990 Guggenheim Fellow, in poetry

  • 1991 McDowell Fellow

  • 1995 Lawrence Foundation Award

  • 2001 Rebels for a Cause award, the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto

  • 2001 Woman of Distinction award in the Arts, YWCA

  • 2002 Chalmers Fellowship in Poetry

  • 2005 Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy

Links

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