DOI: 10.1093/9780197827895.003.0007 ISSN:
Poetics of Planetary Crisis
Nathan Suhr-SytsmaAbstract
Given that Africa already bears some of the worst effects of global heating, the coda relates poetic worldmaking to planetary crisis, many possible worlds to the singular planet we inhabit. It highlights two poetry collections published during the COVID-19 pandemic: Niyi Osundare’s Green: Sighs of Our Ailing Planet and Tjawangwa Dema’s an/other pastoral. Both poets draw on the material of African-language proverbs to grapple with the socio-existential dilemma posed by the planetary crisis. In conversation with Sylvia Wynter’s counterhumanism, it interprets their climate and pandemic poetics as confronting the inescapability of anthropocentrism and its undoing for the sake of a renewed commons.