with Dr Balgiisa Ahmed and Amouraé Bhola-Chin
Content Information: swearing, racism, racist language, slavery, sexual violence, murder and violence.
Assistant Professor of law Balgiisa Sheik Ahmed and creative writing student Amouraé Bhola-Chin join me to talk about an iconic experimental text: M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, a 2008 poetry collection about the Zong! massacre and subsequent legal case, Gregson v. Gilbert. In 1781 the Zong was delayed on route from the West Coast of Africa to Jamaica. It was carrying 470 enslaved people. The captain, Luke Collingwood, believed that if he were to murder his cargo of people, rather than risk them dying from illness or starvation, he could make a claim for his loss under maritime insurance law. After the insurers refused to pay-out, the ship’s owners took them to court, where a jury ruled in their favor, but the insurers appealed the decision to the Court of the King’s Bench.
Philip’s collection dwells on questions of ethics, the law, and language. The book, split up into 6 sections, takes on an increasingly stuttering fragmented form, reflecting the challenge of the collection: how to write a story which cannot be told.
You can find out more about Zong!, and order a copy of the poems, via Philip’s own website.
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