As told to the author by Setaey Adamu Boateng
A poetry performance by m. nourbeSe philip
Thu, Nov 20 at 7:30pm
The Adam Space
Peter Jay Sharp Building

Award-winning poet, writer, and lawyer m. nourbeSe philip comes to BAM for an unforgettable poetry performance. philip’s best known work is her fourth book of poetry, Zong! (2008, 2011, 2023), the book relies entirely on the words of the legal decision Gregson v. Gilbert, the English case related to the massacre of 150 Africans murdered by drowning so that the ship’s owners could collect insurance money in 1781. Equal parts song, moan, shout, oath, ululation, curse, and chant, Zong! excavates the legal text by colliding memory, history, and law resulting in a poetics of the fragment. Through the innovative use of fugal and counterpointed repetition, Zong! becomes an anti-narrative lament that stretches the boundaries of the poetic form, haunting the spaces of forgetting and mourning the forgotten.