ballast

by Quenton Baker

A poetic sequence using the 1841 slave revolt aboard the brig Creole as a lens through which to view the vitality of Black lives and the afterlife of slavery.

In 1841, the only successful, large-scale revolt of American-born enslaved people erupted on the ship Creole . 135 people escaped chattel slavery that day. The event was recounted in US Senate documents, including letters exchanged between US and British consulates in The Bahamas and depositions from the white crew on the ship. There is no known record or testimony from the 135 people who escaped. Their story has been lost to time and indifference. Quenton Baker’s ballast is an attempt at incomplete redress.

With imagination, deep empathy, and skilled and compelling lyricism, Baker took a black marker to those Senate documents and culled a poetic recount of the Creole revolt. Layers of ink connect readers to Baker’s poetic (re)phrasing the narrative of the state through a dexterous process of hands-on redactions.

ballast is a relentless, wrenching, and gorgeously written book, a defiant reclamation of one of the most important but overlooked events in US history, and an essential contribution to contemporary poetry.

Genres: Poetry, History

150 pages, Hardcover

Published April 4, 2023

Reviews

[♡ rey · Rating 5 out of 5]

➥ ❪ 𝟬𝟲/𝟭𝟬/𝟮𝟯 ─ 𝟱★ ❫
 ▸ read on storytel
  ▸ audiobook/ebook

wow.

[Katie ratherbereadinggg · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

[jon jon moore palacios · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been waiting for a book like this! Students of Black theorists of slavery and its afterlives, and readers of Black diasporic poets, have so much to gain from reading and re-reading Baker’s “Ballast.” Rarely does a poet gift us new language to describe the antagonism that is anti/blackness, and Baker’s feat is honest, smart, and dutifully informed by writers and thinkers before them.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

absolutely stunning. really, really good blackout poetry hits like nothing else, and this book delivers the huge and vital and beautiful on every page. source text is the senate documents on the only successful slave revolt in history—in obscuring, baker in fact clarifies the voices hidden and suppressed in the text.

[Alissa Hattman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The experience I had reading ballast was a mess of shock and terror and grief. From these US Senate documents of the 1841 revolt of enslaved people on the ship Creole, quenton baker has enacted what Saidiya Hartman calls "a history written with and against archive." The effect of this erasure poem is a moving account of all those lost to the violence of chattel slavery. A painful, necessary text.

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giving current life to revolt of Creole through rage. Incredible exploration of erasure and verse stagger. Worth multiple reads.

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

from ballast

in and from the waves
an infinite creative grammar

we negate nation
any king is a regrettable yet refuted echo
we unmake what makes us
metabolise entire singularity of rip current

neither super- nor sub-natural
yet unsculptable
arrayed through a certain breach
an ocean of rapid exit

and who hasn't been written open with a blade
air hot enough to cauterise the lungs
molestation so complete the skin forgets to peak and roll

pain stretched to fit/to fill
the world demands from us a habitable breaking

we refuse via search for a praxis that collapses the earth (124)

[Amanda Sola · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of the book was blackout poetry and this was everything. I felt these poems and how they spoke the experiences with such few words, sometimes only one or two at a time. It was moving.

The second part was a series of poems without format, with words falling all over the page. I am sure this is a style I am not sure of the same for, but it doesn't work for me. I spent a lot of time trying to make sure I was reading in the intended order. It also seemed as though the author took a thesaurus to this section and opted for difficult language rather than evoking the emotions that the first part did. Or maybe I'm dumb, I don't know.

[Joseph Nicolls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, absolutely stunning. Beautiful and haunting.

This is one of those works that's difficult to review, because everything about it is exceptionally well-done. Do you just list the themes explored? Do you list the emotions it made you feel? Do you just rotely write your interpretation? Do you analyze the structure of the work? All of that feels empty in comparison to how this work moved me.

[Madi · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was very good

note - do NOT get the ebook :( it is very difficult to read as an ebook as the majority of the pages are scanned and thus a bit pixelated/blurry, making it less easy to read. the poetry is great so don’t make my mistake and instead purchase the physical copy to enjoy it in its true form :)

[katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book -- basically, one 130-page poem with an afterword by Baker -- is incredible. Baker has such a masterful and knife-sharp handle on the English language that they're able to deconstruct these U.S. Senate documents on the 1841 Creole slave revolt and from the violent wreckage create a work awe-inspiring in its scope and resonance.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Necessary and deep, a taking-over and remaking.

[Julia Kerrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fine, blackout poetry can be worthwhile. This was remarkable.

[Robyn]

Notables 2023 #163

[Emily Bison · Rating 5 out of 5]

i hope to see more creative and moving poetic expressions like this one. Perhaps it is more topical than ever right now.

[morbidflight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic work of blackout poetry to reconstruct silenced voices of enslaved people who successfully revolted on a slave ship in 1841.
"they could not kill the sunrise in me" (p. 74)