POETRY AND THE NIGER DELTA ENVIRONMENT: AN ECO-CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
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The Department of English And Literary Studies, Federal University, Lokoja, Kogi State
Abstract
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Poetry of protest is not uncommon in Nigeria literary landscape. It has a direct relationship and relevance to the socio cultural institution and serves as a medium of engagement, decrying neo-colonialism, cultural imperialism, socio-economic oppression and political tyranny. This paper explored the fore-grounding of nature-poetry, especially those from the Niger delta of Nigeria. It examined how eco-poetry had brought national and international awareness to the realities of ecological imperialism and exploitation of the region. The poems that constituted the basic materials for this paper are adopted largely from selected poems and works of Niger delta poets and critics like Gabriel Okara, J.P. Clark, Obiware Ikiriko, Tanure Ojaide, Ken Saro-Wiwa and Nnimmo Bassey, etc. The theoretical framework adapted was the eco-criticism theory with interfaced with one of the characteristics of postcolonial criticism which stressed „cross-cultural interaction‟. We deduced from our findings that the wanton exploitation and negligence of the Nigerian natural environment which has helped to degrade the land and dehumanize the people of Niger delta is symptomatic of a macro-eco-cidal phenomenon, it is the microcosm of a global disaster that beset our common corporate humanity
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), PE English, PR English literature