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Table of Contents
Serpent and the Fire (p. 496-498)
ZONG! by M. NourbeSe Philip
In the anthology Serpent and the Fire: Poetries of the Americas from Origins to Present, Jerome Rothenberg and Javier Taboada include “Zong! #14” and “Zong! #15” from M. NourbeSe Philip’s book-length poem Zong!.
Zong! was originally published in 2008 and is comprised of six sections. “Zong! #14” and “Zong! #15” appear in the section titled Os. The names and definitions of each section are listed below.
- Os - “bone” 1)
- Sal - “salt” 2)
- Ventus - “wind” 3)
- Ration - “reason, in law, the short for ratio decidendi, the central reason for a legal decision” 4)
- Ferrum - “iron” 5)
- Ebora - “underwater spirits” 6)
To listen to M. NourbeSe Philip perform sections of Zong!, click **here**.
Historical Background
The Zong Massacre
The London Museum has an entire webpage titled “The Zong Massacre Trial.” The webpage includes details about slave ships, slavery, and the individuals involved in the legal case that took place due to the massacre. The site describes the Zong massacre as an event occurring “In 1781, [wherein] British enslavers killed 130 enslaved Africans by throwing them off the ship Zong” when a portion of the enslaved individuals became ill. 7) The enslaved individuals were murdered because they were not considered to be human, and thus, their murderers hoped to be compensated by their insurance company rather than absorb the financial loss of “product.” 8) It is important to note that the loss of human life mattered little, and the Zong massacre was a legal issue primarily due to the fact that the “claim was challenged by the insurers in a London trial.”9)
Additional Facts from the London Museum Webpage:
- “None of the murderers were ever prosecuted.” 10)
- When the case went to court, “The ship owners won the first case, but the verdict was appealed. A second trial seems to have never happened…” 11)
- Arguably, the overcrowding on Zong and the inhumane conditions the enslaved individuals were forced into contributed to their health issues. “The ship was carrying around 470 enslaved people held in terrible conditions, controlled by a crew of just 17. It was twice the number the ship was designed for.” 12)
For information regarding the actual legal case, Gregson v. Gilbert, click here: Fordham International Law Journal, "B. The Zong Case," p. 447
__The Poem's Purpose - Reclaiming History and Personhood __
When contemplating what the poems are attempting to do, consider Philip’s assertion that “In Zong!, the African, transformed into a thing by the law, is re-transformed, miraculously, back into human. Through oath and through moan, through mutter, chant and babble, through babble and curse, through chortle and ululation to not-tell the story. . . ” 13)
Key Names
- Zong - “The name of the ship was the Zorg, meaning 'care' in Dutch. An error was made when the name was repainted” 14)
- Setaey Adamu Boateng - Ellen Howley, in the article “The sea and memory: Poetic reconsiderations of the Zong massacre,” writes that this name refers to a “fictional African co-author” 15)
- Nkrumah Ato, Nobanzi, Oduneye, Opa, Fagbulu, Akilah, Falope, Ouma, Weke, Jubade, Nompumelelo, Okulaja, Ekisola, Abike, Arike -
In the article, “Poetics of Reparation in M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!” the author Laurie R. Lambert describes witnessing M. NourbSe Philip perform “Zong! #15,” noting the “improvisatory elements, including the repetition of certain lines from the printed text of the poem and references to contemporary events involving the denial of black life.” 16) Specifically, Lambert goes on to explain that “At two crucial junctures in the poem Philip list[ed] a series of African names, as if invoking the names of the Zong’s victims,” which is significant because when researching the Zong, Philip described “develop[ing] a need to know the names of the murdered,” but being unable to because “The African men, women, and children on board the Zong were stripped of all specificity, including their names” 17) 18) Thus, readers can assume that, in both print and oral performance, Philip added the names to honor the dead. Importantly, Lambert points out that “At this particular performance [the one she attended], Philip added the names of 'Trayvon Eric Mike' to the litany of the dead, acknowledging the murders of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown, African American men whose deaths generated outrage across black communities in the US.” 19)
Author's Own Words
Based on the background information that Philip provides her readers (see the section titled Notanda in the full-length poetry collection) regarding her writing process, it seems pretty evident that the poems are complex, purposeful pieces of writing. As a result, when readers attempt to decipher and interpret the poems, there are a few quotes directly from the author that should be taken into consideration:
“What did, in fact, happen on the Zong? Can we, some two hundred years later, ever really know? Should we? These are the questions I confront. Although presented with the ‘complete’ text of the case, the reader does not ever know it, since the complete story does not exist. It never did. All that remains are the legal texts and documents of those who were themselves intimately connected to, and involved in, a system that permitted the murder of the Africans on board the Zong.” 20)
“I turned instead to the law: certain, objective, and predictable, it would cut through the emotions like a laser to seal off vessels oozing sad-ness, anger, and despair. I yield to a simple but profound curiousity — about the sea, a captain, the sailors, and a ship. About a ‘cargo.’ And the story that must tell itself.” 21)
“My intent is to use the text of the legal decision as a word store; to lock myself into this particular and peculiar discursive landscape in the belief that the story of these African men, women, and children thrown overboard in an attempt to collect insur-ance monies, the story that can only be told by not telling, is locked in this text. In the many silences within the Silence of the text. I would lock myself in this text in the same way men, women, and children were locked in the holds of the slave ship Zong.” 22)
“In the discomfort and disturbance created by the poetic text, I am forced to make meaning from apparently disparate elements —in so doing I implicate myself. The risk — of contamination — lies in piecing together the story that cannot be told. And since we have to work to complete the events, we all become implicated in, if not contaminated by, this activity.” 23)
Visuals & Organization
Space
When we look at how words are placed on the page, we may be confused by the layout, but Philip has an explanation for why there is so much blank “space” in the poems: “Some – all the poems – need a great deal of space around them – as if there is too much cramping around them, as if they need to breathe…” 24)
- Note that the layout of the poems is extremely important to Philip. When commenting on a translation of Zong! that was completed without Philip's knowledge, Philip emphasized the importance of her poetry's layout, writing, “…the translator, Renata Morresi, failed to respect the foundational and organizing principle of Zong!, which is that no word or cluster of words can come directly below another: each word, fragment or word cluster is seeking the space above to breathe as those massacred 240 years ago this November were not able to breathe. It is this restraint and conceptual rigour that gives the work its distinctive shape.” 25)
While Philip wrote with intentionality, at least one choice regarding the layout was a result of a random technology issue as Philip's printer malfunctioned, and “the first two or three pages [were] superimposed on each other.” 26)
The Position of the Names
The names listed in “Zong! #14” and “Zong! #15” are smaller than the main text and positioned similar to the way footnotes are in Word documents. Eva C. Karpinski comments on this arrangement in the article, “Moving the Bones: Multilingual Plasticity in Marlene NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!” to suggest that the “Yoruba names emerge in the liminal space of the margin, in the footnotes, visually ‘floating’ under the water or below the deck of the ship” 27)
__Word Choice __
There are moments in Zong! wherein the words might not make sense, or the author's intention behind the use of certain words is unclear. According to Philip, “Clusters of words sometimes have meaning, often do not — words are broken into and open to make non-sense or no sense at all, which, in turn, becomes a code for another submerged meaning. Words break into sound, return to their initial and originary phonic sound — grunts, plosives, labials“ 28) Philip concludes this train of thought, asking “— is this, perhaps, how language might have sounded at the beginning of time?” 29)
Themes
Resistance
One of the strongest themes in Zong! #14 and Zong! #15 is resistance. M. NourbeSe Philip uses poetry to fight back against how enslaved people were treated—as objects, not as human beings. By using phrases like “the subject in property” and “ratio of murder,” she shows how the legal system tried to hide violence using cold, technical words. The way the poem is written—scattered, broken, and full of space—is also a form of resistance. It doesn’t follow the usual rules of writing or storytelling. That is on purpose. Philip refuses to tell the story the way history books or legal papers do. She creates her own language of resistance to show pain, injustice, and protest. Philip refuses to tell the story in the way that history books or court records might. Instead of that, she writes outside those systems, creating a poetic language that exposes injustice and protests the silence that followed.
Memory and Forgetting
Another important theme is memory—especially remembering those who were erased from history. The Africans who were killed in the Zong massacre were never named in the official documents. Philip includes African names at the bottom of the poems—like Nkrumah Ato, Oduneye, and Ouma—to bring these forgotten people back into the story. This act of naming is very powerful. It gives identity to people who were treated as if they didn’t matter. It turns the poem into a space of healing and honoring. It reminds us that poetry can carry memory across generations, even when history tries to forget.
Language and Silence
Philip only uses words from the original legal case about the Zong massacre. But she breaks them apart, repeats them, and spreads them across the page in strange ways. This shows how the language of the law was used to cover up a crime. The blank spaces and strange layout represent silence—what cannot be said or what was never recorded. In this way, silence becomes part of the message. It shows us the pain that exists beyond words, and it asks the reader to pause, to listen, and to feel what’s missing.
Another Slave Ship, Same Story
Antonio de Castro Alves
The lamentations of the lives taken by slavery and the sea are part of the history of many nations. Reading Philip reminded me of the poetry of Antonio Castro Alves (1847-1871), a Brazilian poet and anti-slavery activist who fought against such injustice through his verses. Tragedy at Sea: The Slave Ship, written in 1868, twelve years before the abolition of slavery in Brazil, resonates with the poetry in Zong!, transporting us to such transatlantic anguish times. Below is an excerpt (part 5) from Castro Alves’ The Slave Ship, translated by Mariza G. Góes:
Slave Ship (Navio Negreiro) - Part V
God of the unfortunates!
You tell me God,
If it is madness…if it is the truth
So much horror below the skies?!
Oh sea, why don’t you erase
With the sponge of your waves
From your mantle, that blot?
Stars! Nights! Tempests!
Roll down from the immensities
Sweep the seas, typhoon!
…
They are the sons of the desert,
Where the earth marries the light.
Where living in open field
The tribe of nude men…
They are the audacious warriors
Who, with the spotted tigers
Fight in the solitude.
Yesterday simple, strong, braves
Today miserable slaves,
With no light, no air, no reason…
They are unfortunate women
Like Hagar was too
Whom thirsty, broken,
From far… very far come
Bringing with feeble steps,
Children and chains in the arms,
In the soul - tears and bitterness…
Like Hagar suffering greatly,
That even no milk of lament
Have they to offer Ishmael.
…
Yesterday the Sierra Leone
The war, the lion hunting,
The sleep, slept without worries
Under the tents of the amplitude!
Today… the dark basement, deep
Infected, crowded, gross,
Housing the plague instead of a jaguar
And the sleep always interrupted
By the sudden pull of a deceased,
And the crashing of a body into the sea…
Yesterday plain freedom,
The will for power…
Today immense cruelty
Even not free to die…
Fastened at the same chain
- Ironed, dismal serpent -
In the links of slavery.
And so, mocking from the death,
Dance the dreadful cohort
At the sound of the lash…Disdainful!
God of the unfortunates!
You tell me God,
If it is madness…if it is the truth
So much horror below the skies?!
Oh sea, why don’t you erase
With the sponge of your waves
From your mantle, that blot?
Stars! Nights! Tempests!
Roll down from the immensities
Sweep the seas, typhoon!
In the poem, the voices beg God and the seas, skies, stars, and storms to intervene in their miserable lives “without light, without air, without reason”. The comparison with their place of origin and the inhuman conditions they lived in evokes the feeling of injustice, and the fear of being considered just a weight on the ship and being thrown overboard, as in Philip's poem. Castro Alves passed away in 1871, if he had lived nine years older, he would have witnessed his country free from slavery cruelty.
References
https://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/reviews/zong-transformation-language-sacred-space
For those who want to know more about Antônio de Castro Alves:
A Link to his biography, click here
Find all six parts of Castro Alves's The Slave Ship here
Castro Alves from Brazil is a poem written by Paulo Neruda, imagining a dialogue between both poets. See here
