Niyi Osundare, renowned poet and professor has called upon writers to partner with politicians and policymakers in the fight against climate change.
Prof. Niyi Osundare
The remark was made in a webinar event organized by The Green Institute, a climate change advocacy organization founded by Dr. Adenike Akinsemolu.
The event held on the 7th of July, 2020 tagged “What the Earth Said”: A Reading and Conversation with Niyi Osundare was hosted by Tosin Gbogi, an associate professor of English and Africana Studies, Marquette University.
Click here to watch the full webinar on Youtube
In his introductory remark, Gbogi observed that “as a result of Covid-19, we are reminded that although humans are on this planet, we are not the planet”. As such, there’s no better time than now to discuss the pertinent issue of the representation of the effects of human actions on the environment in literature in general and poetry in particular. And Niyi Osundare’s poetry was the lens through which the relationship between poetry and the environment was discussed.
Born in 1947, Prof. Niyi Osundare is the author of eighteen books of poetry, two books of selected poems, four plays, a book of essays, several monographs, academic papers, and feature articles on literature, culture, language, and politics. According to Gbogi, “His ecopoetics center both the human and non-human dimensions of our earth especially in ways that show their independence and intertwined state”.
On why he began writing on the environment, Osundare said, he was inspired in the 1980s to write on the environment as a result of the destruction of the rainforest environment of his youth.
The webinar was characterized by Osundare’s poetry performances of some of his selected poems which was followed by a question and answer session. The poems read ran on a four-part theme: the first part centered on paying homage to the earth (extracted from The Eyes of the Earth and Days); the second part focused on mourning the violence done to the earth (extracted from Isle edited with Professor Slovich ); the third part (extracted from his Sequel to The Eyes of the Earth) reflected on the consequences of human actions on the earth; the fourth and final part (also extracted from his Sequel to The Eyes of the Earth) was an admonition to every human inhabiting the planet to be conscious of how their actions affect the state of our earth. Furthermore, in that section, he celebrated climate change advocates whom he referred to as "Earth Warriors".
In the poems read, Osundare reflected on the intersection between poetry and the environment. His poems captured the devastation and the plunder done to the earth by scientists and policymakers.
Essentially, Osundare captures in vivid language how the world has transformed from a beautiful haven to a mechanical village as a result of advancement in science and technology. He lambasted the climate destruction orchestrated in the name of scientific discovery, adding that “If you use the earth as science, then you won’t have the kind of ecocide that we are having now”.
Osundare bemoaned the effect of climate change on Nigeria in particular and the world at large.
In the Nigerian context, Osundare read poems concerning the oil spillage in the Niger Delta caused by multinational companies and that has become a nightmare for the people living in the South-South region of Nigeria. The poem he read was in honor of Ken Saro Wiwa, a revolutionary and a climate change agent (one of the Earth Warriors) from the Niger Delta who was hanged in 1995 by the Nigerian Military Ruler for his activism. Besides Ken Saro Wiwa, he also read another poem titled “How Dare You” inspired by a climate change address delivered to the United Nations by another Earth Warrior, Gretta Thomberg, a Swedish teenager. Hence for Osundare, the Earth Warriors aren't only in Nigeria but all over the world.
A peculiar feature of the poems read by Osundare is that they had a globalist outlook. What this means is that while he was lamenting the destruction of the rainforest in his native hometown in Ikere Ekiti, he was also by extension mourning the destruction of other rainforests in the world such as the Amazon forests.
For those who are skeptical about the concerns of climate change activists and for those who think it’s just a hoax, Osundare cited the case of Lake Chad, noting that the fact it’s drying up is a significant instance of a change in our planet.
The crux of the event was when the renowned professor read his last poem titled “Our Earth will not Die”, extracted from his famous collection, The Eye of the Earth. The poem contained a message of hope and the reverberating tune in which the Poet rendered the repeated line, “our earth will not die” foregrounded an optimistic tone on the part of the poet. The poet believes that as long as we remain committed to keeping the earth safe for ourselves, our children would also benefit from it and their future would be safe as he told the audience that, “we didn’t inherit this earth from our ancestors, we borrowed it from our children”.
A crucial point of the conversation we can’t but mention was when he discussed his notion of differential aesthetics. He explained that he developed the term in response to Western critics fond of imposing one theoretical and aesthetic judgment on works from other people from a different culture and downplaying their aesthetic appeal because it doesn’t fit into their rules of fine aesthetics.
The event which had in attendance scholars and students of poetry also attracted the attention of numerous environmental advocates.