M. NourbeSe Philip Interview
Written by David B Dacosta
Social Justice is not exactly a focus you’d typically associate with your average Caribbean author. That’s not to say that others within the genre have not incorporated this cause in their work. Being a former lawyer seems to have added that extra fire to Poet and Essayist M. NourbeSe Philip’s activist pursuits. The Toronto based, Tobago born transplant, has made a name for herself in academic and artistic circles, both in Canada as well as internationally.
Philip won Cuba’s prestigious Casa de las Americas prize for the manuscript version of her poetry book, She Tries Her Tongue in 1988. Her latest collection, Zong! (2008), is a meditation on an 18th century legal decision regarding a slave ship.
What is the significance of the capital “S” in your name?
The name is from Benin in Africa. When words have an ‘se’ at the end it usually points to some involvement with things of the spirit. That’s where it comes from.
So that’s not your birth name?
It’s not my birth name. I chose it several years ago when I first began writing. It’s part of the long tradition of artists and writers naming themselves or renaming themselves.
Is Tobago just an extension of Trinidad or does it possess its own unique cultural imprint?
Tobago is an entirely different island culturally from Trinidad. The first, and most obvious aspect, would be in terms of the population. The population of Trinidad is, by this point, probably evenly split between Africans and South Asians, with some other groups thrown in there. And also people who might define themselves as mixed. Tobago is primarily African. That’s one of the first things that one is struck by. Because the two islands constitute one political unit, you will have influences. Another way they’re very different, is in terms of speech patterns. There is a very distinct Tobago vernacular or dialect that is actually very similar to the Jamaican vernacular.
You were formerly a lawyer. What area of Law was your expertise, and why did you stop practicing?
I worked in a variety of areas, but the majority of my cases were in Family Law. I also did some Immigration Law and I also did some, what is now called, The Young Offender, back then it was called Juvenile Delinquent Law. That was Criminal Law. I left Law to devote more time to writing. I think I entered Law because I was finishing a family business. My father had always wanted to be a lawyer, so I think I decided that I would fulfill what he didn’t accomplish. He was a primary school principal.
Your poetry book “Zong!” touches on an 18th century legal decision pertaining to Slavery. With all the grand accomplishments of African people over thousands of years, is the discussion of Slavery not a tired subject?
I don’t think the discussion is tired at all. We didn’t begin in Slavery, but certainly our entry into this part of the world came through the vessel of descendants of slaves. I shouldn’t say slaves. I prefer to say enslaved Africans. Capitalist society, I think, functions best in a context of amnesia. The desire to erase that particular aspect of our history; which I might add, we have nothing to be ashamed of. While there’s a great deal of pain, it ought to be something that we can take great pride in. In terms of how we survived. What we brought out of that experience. The dignity with which we survived, and what we have given to the world, given how much was removed from us. Those who need to be ashamed of it, in terms of what it means for them, I think, are often served by those of us who want to say, “Let’s sweep this under the mat, and let’s pretend it didn’t happen.” As in any individual’s life, there comes a time when we begin to reflect on our parents, and where we came from, and how did we get shaped in this way. I think if we are to understand some of our pathologies today, to better heal them, we need to see how those pathologies got started.How would you define yourself, Tobagonian, Canadian or African?
I’m first and foremost, a Tobagonian. That’s why you see on the back of my books, I identify myself as being born in Tobago. Tobago tends to get confused under Trinidad, and there’s been a long resistance to that by Tobagonians. The two islands are very interconnected, families marry, and a lot of people went into the government in Trinidad, and so on. But there’s also a very long and deep sense of pride and identity among Tobagonians. Both my parents are from Tobago. My father was a long time advocate of Tobago [laughter]. In addition to that, the island is the place that I write from, although I don’t necessarily write about. It remains very central to my writing life. That is my foundation.
Copyright 2011
__________________________
by rob mclennan
Zong!
by M. NourbeSe Philip. (Toronto, ON: Mercury Press, 2008, 128 pp., $22.95.)
Zong! # 26
was the cause was the remedy was
the record was the argument was the
delay was the evidence was overboard
was the not was the cause was the was
was the need was the case was the
perils was the want was the particular
circumstance was the seas was the costs
was the could was the would was the
policy was the loss was the vessel was
the rains was the order was the that
was the this was the necessity was the
mistake was the captain was the crew
was the result was justified was the
voyage was the water was the maps
was the weeks was the winds was the
calms was the captain was the seas
was the rains was uncommon was the
declaration was the apprehension was
the voyage was destroyed was thrown
was the question was the therefore was
the this was the that was the negroes
was the causeWhat is this thing called Zong! by Toronto writer M. NourbeSe Philip, as told to the author by Setaey Adamu Boateng? As Philip begins in her essay, “Notanda,” at the end of the collection:
There is no telling this story: it must be told:
In 1781 a fully provisioned ship, the Zong, captained by one Luke Collingwood, leaves the West Coast of Africa with a cargo of 470 slaves and sets sail for Jamaica. As is the custom, the cargo is fully insured. Instead of the customary six to nine weeks, this fateful trip will take some four months on account of navigational errors on the part of the captain. Some of the Zong’s cargo is lost through illness and lack of water; many others, by order of the captain are destroyed: “Sixty negroes died for want of water … and forty others … through thirst and frenzy … threw themselves into the sea and were drowned; and the master and mariners …were obliged to throw overboard 150 other negroes.”
Captain Luke Collingwood is of the belief that if the African slaves on board die a natural death, the owners of the ship will have to bear the cost, but if they were “thrown alive into the sea, it would be the loss of the underwriters.” In other words, the massacre of the African slaves would prove to be more financially advantageous to the owners of the ship and its cargo than if the slaves were allowed to die of “natural causes.”
And so begins the story of Philips’ complex quest, to rework the language of the court case of the captain against his insurers, to salvage a poem as a wake for those lost souls, working to salvage some kind of humanity against its own inhumanity. Her lengthy essay at the back of the collection provides a rich context to the work and where it came out of, the language she began with, a story ending with the deliberate murder of slaves at sea, and continuing with a court case that provided an impetus for change to slave traffic across the Pacific.
I have brought two legal texts with me to Vermont, one on contracts, the other is on insurance law — a branch of contract law. The boredom that comes with reading case after case is familiar and, strangely, refreshing, a diversion from going somewhere I do not wish to go. I find out what I knew before: that essentially a contract of insurance or indemnity provides that a sum of money will be paid when an event occurs which is adverse to the interests of the person who has secured insurance. But I am hunting for something — anything — to give me some bearing, since I am, metaphorically speaking, at sea, having cut myself off from the comfort and predictability of my own language — my own meaning.
What intrigues is just how she wrestles a kind of “found” language, incorporating such into a workable poetic text, tearing the language apart and reassembling it; turning the violence of what the words discuss back in on itself, making the act of writing a violence in itself, to reassert its own power. This material of poems found in or created out of an outside text is something Canadian poetry has been tinkering with for years, whether Lisa Robertson reassembling the scientific language of weather in her poetry collection The Weather (Vancouver BC: New Star Books, 2001), Michael Holmes playing the language of professional wrestling in Parts Unknown (Toronto ON: Insomniac Press, 2004) or Rachel Zolf reworking “office speak” in her third collection, Human Resources (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2007). As Philip writes in her essay, “Law and poetry both share an inexorable concern with language — the ‘right’ use of the ‘right’ words, phrases, or even marks of punctuation; precision of expression is the goal shared by both.” Perhaps this has even been a long time coming, for the self-proclaimed “poet, writer and lawyer,” merging the overlap of all her concerns in a single self-contained project.
Zong! # 15
defend the dead
weight of circumstance
ground
to usual &
etc
where the ratio of just
is less than
is necessary
to murder
the subject in property
the save in underwriter
where etc tunes justice
and the ratio of murder
is
the usual in occurred
Part of what Philip, among some of these examples, works is in rehumanizing a language set to do exactly the opposite (as in Zolf). Philip’s poems work a scatter and a violence, fragmenting in the waves of the page in a way difficult to replicate properly in the confines of a review. Is it the sweet of water, the waves, and the song the water sings? Is it the violent tearing apart of a language expressly meant to dehumanize, after a series of dehumanizing acts, from slavery to murder, turning back into a poem written out as a wake, an acknowledgement for some one hundred and fifty human beings, writing “there is / creed there is / fate there is / oh / oh oracle / there are / oh oh / ashes / over,” writing “we act the part but ration / the facts”? Broken up into various sections, the poem builds, the language tears, sweeps and expands across the page, finally fragmenting and even fading over itself, replicating a black or white out (as she suggests), a fading into the white of the page itself, sinking, singing, deep into water.
This poem makes its way through water, witness and song; and is it any accident that the final word of her text is “reason” (p. 182)?
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