Ecopoetic Representations of the Anthropocene in Ebi Yeibo’s Petro Poetry

Ecopoetic discourse foregrounds a new interpretive approach to the study of environment, especially in the humanities which treats it as a cultural phenomenon. This notion has inspired the ecopoetical treatment of the earth, first as home, next as a spiritual entity and then, as resource. The perspective of the environment as resource has entrenched the Anthropocene, considered as the human endangerment of nature owing to technological advancement and quest for wealth, which has exacerbated resource extraction and its destruction of the environment. This essay specifically studies Ebi Yeibo’s petropoetry, that means, poems about crude oil thus reflecting environmental pollution. The main thrust is to show how the poet employs thermographical, aerographical and hydrological environmental degradation and economic hardship in the Niger Delta. This essay therefore interrogates the consequences of the extraction of oil in the Niger Delta. It captures ecological, economic and social imperatives through appropriate aesthetic representations. Through this, the essay reveals Yeibo’s concern with environmental destruction interest in the petropoems. While the study employs textual analytic evaluation of the environment, it equally applies ecopoetics to interpret the deep layers of environmental injustices in the poems. The essay concludes that Yeibo deploys poetics of air, water, and heat to represent the devastating consequences of oil exploitation such as environmental degradation and economic hardship while deploying artistic elements such as sound, imagery and tropes of identity and association to canvass strategies for mitigating the misery.