POETICS OF RESISTANCE: ECOCRITICAL READING OF OJAIDE'S DELTA BLUES & HOME SONGS AND DAYDREAM OF ANTS AND OTHER POEMS

Abstract

Nigerian written poetry spans about six decades, from its inception, and has been a medium of engagement, decrying colonialism, cultural imperialism, socio-economic oppression and political tyranny. Tanure Ojaide’s poetic enterprise follows in the footsteps of this mould of interdiction, which can be called resistance poetics. Particularly, his collections of poetry, Delta Blues & Home Songs and Daydream of Ants and Other Poems, are illustrations of ecocritical literature. Ecocriticism in literature is a form of aesthetics that concerns itself with the nature of relationship between literature and the natural environment. Ojaide considers the ecocritical art of poetry as a kind of public duty, which he owes to the Nigerian people, to expose, reconstruct, and negate the actualities of environmental degradation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The author argues that since Ojaide’s poetry intersects with the realities of ecological imperialism, it is thus a dependable barometer to gauge the Nigerian environmental/ ecological experience.