FOR OLIVIA Douglass, ‘M. NourbeSe Philip’s writing arrived like a first breath above water’.
The British-Nigerian writer and poet was talking ahead of Strange Echoes, her six-day convening that celebrates the life, work and influence of the poet and writer, which takes place at The Institute of Contemporary Arts later this month.
Philip’s writing has a deep influence on Black experimental writing in Britain today, and Strange Echoes positions Philip’s work as a call to which artists respond in creative forms, spanning poetry, installation, film, audio and live music.
Collectivity, language, belonging, and the poetics of the fragment, are themes and concerns that persist throughout the convening.
Douglass, Curator of Strange Echoes, said: “For me, M. NourbeSe Philip’s writing arrived like a first breath above water.
“Her texts affirm our being, in turn urging me to follow the instinctive need to disobey the language, the logic, within which I write.
“As I look around in awe at the generation of Black writers, poets, thinkers, and dreamers to which I belong, I feel wild gratitude for the freedom and futures Philip’s work offers us.
“In extension to being a site of celebration, I hope that this convening is an added impulse to a culture of Black poetry and writing thriving in the UK’.
Philip’s writing is marked by a striking distrust and re-dubbing of the English language as a colonial tool, it’s design reducing the experience of African people to abstraction and commodity.
In her seminal texts She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks and Zong! language is ruptured and exploded in order to reveal the violence and absurdity it imposes on Black people.
Her profound deconstruction of colonial language and logic urges readers to consider how the brutality and infrastructure of the transatlantic slave trade still reverberates into the realities of the world today.
As Black writers in Britain grapple with the country’s history, racism, politics and culture, they find resonance with Philip’s poetic exploration of exile and the ache of belonging.
Philip’s work becomes a blueprint for articulating the complexity and beauty of Black life, and emboldens experimental, fugitive writing. With this guidance, new generations of writers across the African diaspora continue to map routes towards alternative visions of liberation and being.
Philip, poet and scholar, said: ‘(I)t is imperative that our writing begin to recreate our histories and our myths, as well as integrate that most painful of experiences—loss of our history and our word.
“The reacquisition of power to create in one’s own i-i-mage and to create one’s own i-mage is vital to this process…. (The Absence of Writing or How I Almost Became a Spy).’
Strange Echoes opens with a screening of Frontiers of Silence, a short film series made by Douglass featuring poets Courtney Conrad, Esther Heller and Ebun Sodipo, followed by a conversation between M. NourbeSe Philip (who joins on Zoom), Shenece Oretha and poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley (Feb 22). Workshops will be led by Professor Joan-Anim Addo (Feb 23) and K Bailey Obazee, founder of PRIM, a digital platform for queer Black storytelling (Feb 26).
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