In 1781 the captain of the slave ship, Zong, murders, by drowning, one hundred and fifty Africans so as to collect insurance monies. Through fragments of voices, shreds of memory and shards of silence, Zong! unravels the story that can only be told by not telling.

The poem focuses on victims of the Zong massacre, approximately 150 enslaved Africans who were murdered for insurance purposes in 1781. Reaction to the massacre and the lawsuits surrounding the case would propel the British abolitionist movement forward.

Zong!, the poem, is composed entirely from the words of the found text, Gregson vs. Gilbert. Through fragments of voices, shreds of memory and shards of silence, Zong! unravels the story that can only be told by not telling. It is participatory …

Feb 11, 2014 · NourbeSe Philip’s collection of poems entitled Zong! seeks to respond to this aim by emulating the thoughts and experiences of slaves aboard the ship and beginning to work through the process of understanding the event and its long-ranging ramifications.

In 1781 a fully provisioned ship, the Zong,l captained by one Luke Collingwood, leaves the West Coast2 of Africa with a cargo of 470 slaves and sets sail for Jamaica. As is the custom, the cargo is fully insured.

The book recounts the 1781 story of the slave ship Zong, whose captain threw 132 African slaves overboard for the insurance money. The traumatic story is told through fragments of voices and memories through which Philip unsettles the forms of canonical English poetry and exploits the limits of the page.

The story of the eighteenth-century slave ship Zong is one that continues to haunt the imaginations of artists and writers.

The poem focuses its investigation on the case of the 1781 Zong massacre and the Gregson v. Gilbert maritime insurance case that arose in its wake. Zong! mourns the massacre of 150 Africans who were thrown overboard so that owners of the slave ship could collect insurance money on lost "cargo".

Oct 10, 2023 · 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.