Ringed by Language. And Yet.

Justy Phillips & Upswell Publishing

Ringed by Language. And Yet.

Justy Phillips & Upswell Publishing


A live, prologue performance by Justy Phillips and Maria Lurighi towards Ringed by Language. And Yet., a book by Justy Phillips. Published by Upswell.

Ringed by Language. And Yet., is a new book by Justy Phillips and Upswell Publishing. This event is a live, prologue performance by Justy Phillips and Maria Lurighi with visuals by James Newitt.

Prose. Memoir. Essay. Other. For so many years, I did not know how to say what is now, carefully held in this book. Then my heart began to fail. And when I finally sat down to write about the precarious experience of one thing, the other just tumbled out.

No doubt my whole life, my work as an artist, has been its own process of recovery. And now, through this body, a book—part creature, part ocean, part mouthfuls of air—I have been able to surface an unlikely chronicle of heart failure.

Where do failures of the heart begin? How do they move? Accumulate, mutate, oscillate back and forth between us? These faltering organs. It is terrifying. And yet so important to bring into language such things.