Reading Eco-crisis Poems in the Face of Environmental Crises in Reality: A Case Study

บทคัดย่อ

Ecocriticism has been a dynamic branch of literary studies from the late 20^th century onward; the discussion of ecopoetry, however, seems to lag behind that of environmental fiction and non-fiction. This study aims to examine relevant messages and implications of selected ecopoems that specifically deal with environmental crises. Starting with a literature review of the definitions and elements prevalent in the field of ecopoetry and criticism, the study offers close-reading analysis of five contemporary poems about pressing eco-crises, covering the issues of chemical pollution, nuclear power plant disaster, and climate change in the Anthropocene. The selected poems are Olive Senior’s “My Father’s Blue Plantation” (Senior, Gardening, 1994), Shouji Mitsui’s “A Different Version of ‘A Record of the Living’” (Mitsui, 2014), Lavinia Greenlaw’s “The Recital of Lost Cities” (Greenlaw, 1993), Craig Santos Perez’s “Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015” (Perez, 2016), and Carol Ann Duffy’s “Parliament” (Duffy, The Bees, 2011). The findings include the shared features of ecopoems discussed, namely the stimulating perception about the environmental threats that is tinged with humor and satire, the sense of connectedness or entanglement between humans and the nonhumans, and the link to real situations as well as the projection of the future. Finally, the closing section reviews ecopoetry’s accessibility, its modes of publication, and its potential to communicate the serious environmental risks that the earth and humanity are currently facing.