“Verbs are a Tragedy”: Poetics of Refusal From the Black Diaspora

“Language [is] a foreign anguish,” once declared Afro-Caribbean diasporic poet NourbeSe Philip. Philip’s sentiment holds true predominantly for those who write within Anglophone spheres, yet cannot relay their anguish to their mothers in English. This article argues that the English language, as a diasporic tongue, is a limited and limiting entity that precludes the rich spectrum of expression of diasporic consciousness. A number of poets from the Black Diaspora have sought to transgress the boundaries of their language, and in turn produced strategies for liberation. In this article, I analyze and compare the work of NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, June Jordan, and Claire Harris to demonstrate how the desire for liberation from coloniality has produced linguistically deconstructive impulses in these poets. Their resulting oeuvre is characterized by a distinctive refusal that tends toward fragmentation, incompleteness, and a sense of strangeness.