dc.description.abstract |
The discourse of environmental degradation captures monumental losses which culminate
in trauma, and this largely informs the content as well as the form of Niger Delta poetry.
Existing studies on critical engagements with ecological issues in Niger Delta poetry have
emphasised the physical destruction and pollution of the environment, with little attention
paid to the subject of trauma in the poetry. This study was, therefore, designed to examine
trauma and traumatogenic inscriptions in selected eco-conscious poetry collections from the
Niger Delta region. This was with a view to determining the insignias of trauma induced by
ecological disaster and the literary devices deployed in foregrounding this relationship.
Stef Craps’ model of Trauma Theory served as the framework, while the interpretive design
was used. Tanure Ojaide’s Songs of Myself: Quartet (SM), Sophia Obi’s Tears in a Basket
(TB), Albert Otto’s Letters from the Earth (LE), G’Ebinyo Ogbowei’s marsh boy & other
poems (mb), Nnimmo Bassey’s I Will Not Dance To Your Beat (IWNDTYB) and Ibiwari
Ikiriko’s Oily Tears of the Delta (OTD) were purposively selected owing to the insignias of
trauma embedded in them. The texts were subjected to literary analysis.
Trauma and traumatogenic inscriptions are portrayed from the perspectives of triggers and
manifestations. The triggers are denoted through imprinted pain and sadness, anxiety and
grief (SM, TB, LE, mb, IWNDTYB and OTD), rage (SM, TB and mb), agitation and
frustration (OTD), and despair (LE). These triggers are manifest through psychic torture and
emotional distress at disconcerting memories (SM, TB, LE, mb, IWNDTYB and OTD),
depression (SM, TB, mb, IWNDTYB and OTD), delusion (SM, TB, LE, mb and OTD), and
illusions (TB, LE, mb and OTD). They are also depicted through suicide and suicidal
thoughts (mb and IWNDTYB), self-estrangement and loneliness (SM), feelings of
estrangement and insomnia (TB), mental confusion and violence (mb), amnesia
(IWNDTYB), psychic numbing and hallucination (OTD). Stylistically, enjambment and
apostrophe are predominantly used to emphasise the mental distress experienced by the poet
personas and, by extension, the Niger Delta populace (SM, TB, LE, mb, IWNDTYB and
OTD). The collections are also saturated with repetition to draw attention to grief (SM, TB,
LE, mb, IWNDTYB and OTD), intertextuality to depict the people’s contrasting conditions
and misery (SM and OTD), and rhetorical questions to emphasise pain (SM, TB, LE,
IWNDTYB and OTD). Metaphorical language and imagery are used to inscribe agonising
experiences and pains (SM, TB, LE, mb, IWNDTYB and OTD); while irony (TB and
IWNDTYB) and oxymoron (SM, TB, LE, mb, IWNDTYB and OTD) are used to stress the
contradictions that result in trauma. These tropes mimic the effects of trauma and bear out
its inscriptions. However, the series of traumatic experiences are presented in phenomenal
emotional language (SM, TB and LE) and steeped in resistance undertone (mb, IWNDTYB
and OTD).
Niger Delta eco-conscious poetry inscribes trauma as a stealthily ongoing disaster in the
region, and the trauma is catalysed by environmental degradation. Therefore, poetry is a
suitable medium for relating traumatic experiences in literary form. |
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