Liam O'Sullivan
Is the pen mightier than the sword?
Throughout the twentieth century, Nobel prize winner for Literature Seamus Heaney, dazzled us with his poems of growing up on a farm in the Irish countryside. In his famous poem, ‘The Peninsular’, Heaney described beautiful images of an Irish landscape that stayed with him throughout his life. Showing his deep affections for the Irish landscape that he described as ‘a land without marks’, to emphasise its intensely untouched and preserved nature.[1] It is this same intense love of nature towards his homeland that fuels Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide in his poetry. Both poets use their poetry to share a spiritual connection to their lands, as their experiences of growing up on and working from the lands has ingrained nature into their culture. Both the Irish and Nigerian landscapes are romanticized throughout their poetry for their pristine natural beauty, while both Heaney and Ojaide also relied on the land's natural resources for their very survival.
Yet ‘a land without marks’ does not describe the devastation and atrocities committed at Tanure Ojaide’s land in the Niger Delta region. There is a major lack of development in public services and instead a major rise in the development of environmental issues, such as gas flares, oil spillages and air pollution.[2] To make matters worse, crude oil makes up to 70% of Nigeria’s annual income, leaving the impoverished people of the Niger Delta region completely powerless against an oil industry that constitutes a huge majority of the country’s economy.[3] This is why for Ojaide, poetry is more than just poetry; it is a tool of political resistance for the oppressed. Poetry is a form of activism that doesn’t require the same financial resources as most of the environmental justice movements found in the Global North. Despite this, Ojaide’s poetry remains especially potent at reaching an emotional rapport with his audience. This is shown in his poem, ‘The Omoja River’, where after describing an idyllic childhood scene, Ojaide starkly describes the ‘affliction’ caused by oil companies to the ‘ageless’ river, devolving it to a ‘cesspool'.[4] Meaning that while Heaney was able to enjoy a pristine and mostly untouched Irish haven; Ojaide’s haven is still being devastated before him in the name of oil exploration and his poetry is his gallant stand against the perpetrators responsible.
My blog seeks to use poetry to better understand these differences and developments in culture between environmental movements in the Global North and Global South. Poetry is able to resonate emotionally with people and with the increasing development of social media and other online outlets. Poetry is also an increasingly useful way for people unable to start their own pressure groups and environmental justice groups to take part in environmental activism. Yet, despite this, most environmental injustices and atrocities take place within the Global South. Environmental justice movements in the Global North such as Extinction Rebellion risk their activists facing arrest through their militant tactics of civil disobedience; while activists in the Global South are faced with corruption, displacement and often death. This acts as a stark reminder to the differences in the challenges faced by the different cultures of environmental justice movements and re-bears the question: Is the pen mightier than the sword?
Firstly, it is important to note that the Global South or North are not terms to describe two unified cultures of environmentalism. For example, in the Global South there certainly are many cultures that could be considered to share cultural similarities that may be very similar. However, to truly understand the culture behind any specific environmental movement in the Global South or Global North they must be understood within their own right. Although, for the purposes of this blog, I will analyse the general themes between environmentalism in the Global South and in the Global North.
Modern environmentalist culture in the Global North can often be characterised by its focus on issues such as climate change, sustainability and preservation of endangered animals and nature parks. Iits environmental justice activism centres around social media, civil disobedience and pressure groups, with any member of the public able to get involved.[5] Poetry is very useful at showing the development of the culture of environmentalism in the Global North. This is because literature and nature have been closely tied since the European Romantic Age, meaning poetry can help us to compare the differences in developments in culture.[6] Poetry hereby, historicizes the culture of environmentalism.[7] The development of environmentalist culture can first be shown in the 1967 poem ‘For a Coming Extinction’ by W.S. Merwin, describing the endangerment of the ‘Gray Whale’ and criticizes humanity for its selfish and unholy nature.[8] Merwin exemplifies the John Muir conservationist movement that focused around the preservation of nature and its deep roots within Christianity. This is shown by the whale in the poem, as it is symbolic of the whale that swallowed Jonah for not adhering to God’s bidding. This shows the effectiveness of poetry for analysing culture as well as invoking Christianity to suggest a biblical warning to those endangering the preservation of God’s creation. The development of the culture of environmentalism in the Global North can be seen in the 2011 poem, ‘Webcam the World’ by Heather McHugh.[9] The poem describes climate change, Famines in Ethiopia and calls upon people to video nature and upload it to the internet. The encouragement of social media to be used as a form of activism shows the development of social media as a method of activism that was absent earlier in Global Northern environmentalist culture. Furthermore, the emphasis around climate change is characteristic of the culture of environmentalism in the Global North that developed through growing concerns about climate change during the latter half of the twentieth century. McHugh also refers to the famines in Ethiopia when she says, ‘the boy in Addis Ababa who feeds the starving dog’. This shows the growing concern for the environmentalism of the poor that has had on modern environmentalist culture since Joan Martinez Alier’s landmark work on the subject; and also the development of social media making victims in less economically developed countries more visible than they had been during the 20th century.[10] However, the poem also shows some continuity with earlier Global North environmentalist culture, as it questions ‘how many’ species are left; showing influences from conservationism.
Meanwhile environmentalist culture in the Global South can often be characterized by the corporate exploitation of natural resources, spiritual displacement and violence. While its environmental justice activism is very varied, ranging from street marches to lawsuits to blockades.[11] Activism is also often very violent with militants terrorizing locals and settlers in the name of activism.[12] The differences between environmentalism in the Global North and Global South as well the development of environmentalism is shown through ecocritical poetry. Early poetry in the Global South has heavily focussed on political liberation and political corruption of its governments or other claimants of power, which explains the strong criticism towards governments regarding environmental injustice in ecocritical poetry.[13] This is why Tanure Ojaide’s 1998 Delta Blues and Home Songs is best to show the development of early environmentalist culture in the Global South as Ojaide frequently refers to the past when describing nature. Ojaide describes:
This share of paradise, the Delta of my birth
Reels from an immeasurable wound
Barrels of alchemical draught flow
Inheritance I sat on for centuries
Now crushes my body and soul…
Ojaide invokes both past and present as he describes the spiritual displacement he experiences as the ‘Delta’, his home and ‘share of paradise’ suffers a ‘wound’ that ‘now crushes his body and soul’.[14] This crushing of the soul after losing his share of paradise, shows the spiritual displacement he experiences as while he is not a sufferer of displacement, the environmental devastation has caused a displacement from the lands that he once had a cultural connection to. The development of environmental culture in the Global South can be seen in the 2021 poem ‘Return to being’, by Nnimmo Bassey.[15] In the poem, Bassey shows the invisibility of actors as he describes ‘Mother Earth awakes, embraces her visible and invisible children’. This draws attention to the invisibility of people, (predominantly in the Global South) that often makes them susceptible to becoming the victims of slow violence as they don’t have the economic power or institutions in place to combat environmental injustice.[16] ‘Knowledge demonized by market environmentalists’, here Bassey describes the environmentalists of the Gospel of Eco efficiency that believed that a free market was key to improving environmental quality through ideas such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘sustainability’. However, she condemns these environmentalists due to the environmental devastation caused to the environment in the Global South from the capitalist market as the motive of profit left a limited motive to protect the environment. Thus, showing how the effects of environmental injustice caused a shift in the development of the culture of environmentalism and a distrust of some environmentalists in the Global South.
So, is the pen mightier than the sword?
Poetry has shown the development of environmentalist culture throughout time and shows the cultural differences between environmentalism in different regions of the world. This allowed us to see that environmentalism in the Global South is far more violent and unsuccessful compared to environmentalism in the Global North due to invisibility of actors and victims. Furthermore, poetry shows the development of the types of activism used and attitudes towards environmentalism, with even some contempt shown from environmentalists towards other forms of environmentalism. This shows that poetry is a powerful tool of activism itself, within all types of environmentalism and lives on through generations. Meaning poetry and the pen is far more effective than acts of violence to combat environmental injustice.
[1] Seamus Heaney. Door into the Dark: Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
[2] Sule Emmanuel Egya (2016) Nature and environmentalism of the poor: eco-poetry from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28:1, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2015.1083848
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
[5] Leah Temper, Daniela del Bene and Joan Martinez-Alier. 2015. Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas. Journal of Political Ecology 22: 255-278.
[6] Sule Emmanuel Egya (2016) Nature and environmentalism of the poor: eco-poetry from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28:1, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2015.1083848
[7] ibid.
[8] Merwin, William Stanley. "For a Coming Extinction." The Southern Review 3, no. 3 (1967): 636.
[9] McHugh, Heather. Upgraded to Serious. Copper Canyon Press, 2012, 8-9.
[10] Martinez-Alier, Joan. "The environmentalism of the poor." Geoforum 54 (2014): 239-241.
[11] Leah Temper, Daniela del Bene and Joan Martinez-Alier. 2015. Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas. Journal of Political Ecology 22: 255-278.
[12] Sule Emmanuel Egya (2016) Nature and environmentalism of the poor: eco-poetry from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28:1, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2015.1083848
[13] Ojaide, Tanure. “New Trends in Modern African Poetry.” Research in African Literatures 26, no. 1 (1995): 4–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820083.
[14] Ojaide, Tanure. Delta blues and home songs: Poems. Kraft Books Limited, 1998.
[15] Bassey, Nnimmo. "Return to Being: A poem by Right Livelihood Laureate Nnimmo Bassey", GC Human Rights Preparedness, 5 July 2021, https://gchumanrights.org/preparedness/article-on/return-to-being-a-poem-by-right-livelihood-laureate-nnimmo-bassey.html
[16] Sule Emmanuel Egya (2016) Nature and environmentalism of the poor: eco-poetry from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28:1, 1-12, DOI: 10.1080/13696815.2015.1083848