Nature in the Balance: The Commodification of the Environment in Niyi Osundare’s 'The Eye of the Earth'

Abstract

Niyi Osundare is one of a leading group of political and vociferous contemporary Nigerian poets. He uses art to interrogate the politics of the seasons. In Osundare’s own words, poetry is ‘‘man meaning to man’’. Man, here, is non-gendered. Osundare maintains that poetry should have a political message for his people and their land for it to have meaning. Osundare’s overriding concern in the collection, The Eye of the Earth (1986), is animated by eco-poetry, which he explores with what he has characterised as the ‘‘semantics of terrestiality’’, that is, words for the earth. Eco-poetry deals with environmental politics and the ecological implications of humankind’s business on the planet. Eco-poetry takes as its focal point humankind taking responsibility for the altered state of the natural world. Armed with this poetic sensibility, Osundare unearths the commodification of socio-economic relations, leadership failure, environmental/ecological immiseration and endangered Nature mediated through (global) capitalism. Committed to saving Nigeria’s environment, Osundare uses eco-poetry to advance this cause, as well as to decry environmental injustice and unbridled materialist pursuit adversely affecting Nature, biodiversity and the ecology. Thus, the intention of this paper is to investigate how The Eye of the Earth brings our attention to the precarious state of Nigeria’s natural world as a result of capitalism.