Dominant narratives often frame revolution, particularly insurgency, as chaotic, irrational, and destructive. In the Niger Delta, this framing continues to obscure the historical, political, and ecological contexts that drive local resistance. This study challenges such portrayals by analysing how G’Ebinyo Ogbowei’s Marsh Boy & Other Poems redefines insurgency as a deliberate, poetic act of cultural and environmental reclamation. Through close readings of three central poems, “Marsh Boy”, “The Horrors of History”, and “To Brig-Gen Wuyep”, the study argues that insurgency in Ogbowei’s work is not simply depicted but performed through poetic form. Drawing on Sule Egya’s idea of literary militancy and Cajetan Iheka’s conceptualisation of postcolonial ecocriticism, the study demonstrates how Ogbowei uses repetition, enjambment, metaphor, and allusion to turn grief and dispossession into insurgent defiance. Insurgency is expressed through the structure of the poems: in the rhythm of rage, the repetition of resistance, and the collapse of linear temporality. The study distinguishes insurgency from resistance, defining the former as a rupture, a refusal of state legitimacy, and a reclamation of land, memory, and identity. This study fills a gap in Niger Delta literary criticism by demonstrating how insurgency serves as both a method and a message. It argues that Ogbowei’s poetry forms a counter-archive that reclaims the Delta’s ecological and historical agency, offering a restorative vision of revolution grounded in Indigenous voice and poetic form.
