TY - JOUR

T1 - The Weeping Earth

T2 - Entangled Humanism, Precarity, and Imaginaries in African Eco-Poetry

AU - Adeniyi, Emmanuel

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 Unisa Press.

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - The ecological visions of two African poets and their portrayal of the precarious condition of the environment in Africa are discussed in this article. Their nostalgic reflections on the idyllic image of the continent before anthropogenic activities degraded its fertile greenery also received major attention. Zakari Musa’s Elegy for the Earth (2020) and John Ngong’s The Tears of the Earth (2019) are critically analysed to expound the poets’ temporal triangulation of ecological discourse in Africa. I adopt Nigeria and Cameroon as models of African ecological space to interrogate the poetic contemplation of eco-precarity, temporality, and a vision of a new Africa built on human-nature interdependency and the green economy imaginary. Drawing on insights from ecofeminism and other relevant conceptual perspectives in environmental humanities, I examine sundry ecological topoi, including the politics of gendering and anthropomorphising the environment, the effects of the politics on nature, and the possibility of educating the African mind through the focalisation of precarity in African ecological poetry. I argue that the poets’ romanticisation of nature offers them an opportunity to intensify their education project by emphasising nature's contributions to life sustenance, while warning that human beings are self-destructing because of their insensitivity to climate change.

AB - The ecological visions of two African poets and their portrayal of the precarious condition of the environment in Africa are discussed in this article. Their nostalgic reflections on the idyllic image of the continent before anthropogenic activities degraded its fertile greenery also received major attention. Zakari Musa’s Elegy for the Earth (2020) and John Ngong’s The Tears of the Earth (2019) are critically analysed to expound the poets’ temporal triangulation of ecological discourse in Africa. I adopt Nigeria and Cameroon as models of African ecological space to interrogate the poetic contemplation of eco-precarity, temporality, and a vision of a new Africa built on human-nature interdependency and the green economy imaginary. Drawing on insights from ecofeminism and other relevant conceptual perspectives in environmental humanities, I examine sundry ecological topoi, including the politics of gendering and anthropomorphising the environment, the effects of the politics on nature, and the possibility of educating the African mind through the focalisation of precarity in African ecological poetry. I argue that the poets’ romanticisation of nature offers them an opportunity to intensify their education project by emphasising nature's contributions to life sustenance, while warning that human beings are self-destructing because of their insensitivity to climate change.

KW - African poetry

KW - eco-spirituality

KW - ecofeminism

KW - Lake Nyos limnic eruption

KW - Niger Delta crisis

KW - Cultural studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85205543202&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/3e56d889-4db9-3d9a-a458-bdf2454129eb/

U2 - 10.1080/18125441.2024.2358308

DO - 10.1080/18125441.2024.2358308

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85205543202

JO - Scrutiny2

JF - Scrutiny2

SN - 1812-5441

ER -