M. NourbeSe Philip

M. NourbeSe Philip c_privat

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. M. NourbeSe Philip lives and works in Canada.

Publications (a selection):
Zong!. Wesleyan Poetry 2008
She Tries Her Tongue. Her Silence Softly Breaks. Gynergy Books/Ragweed Pr 1989
Salmon Courage. Williams Wallace Inc. 1983
Thorns. Williams Wallace Inc. 1980