COPOETICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN CONTEMPORARY IGBO POETRY

Abstract

Ecological concerns have become increasingly central to literary scholarship, particularly in studies that explore how African indigenous texts encode relationships between humans and the natural environment. Despite the growing body of ecocritical studies in African literature, limited attention has been devoted to the ways contemporary Igbo poetry constructs ecological meaning within its cultural and symbolic imagination. This paper, therefore, examines how selected Igbo poets represent and reimagine the natural environment through diverse thematic and symbolic configurations. It also interrogates the extent to which these poetic texts articulate an indigenous ecological consciousness grounded in Igbo cosmology, cultural values, and environmental ethics. Anchored in ecocriticism, the study adopts a qualitative approach based on close textual reading and thematic analysis of eleven (11) modern Igbo poetic anthologies. Findings revealed that contemporary Igbo poets consistently portray the environment as spiritually charged, morally significant, and deeply intertwined with communal life, healing practices, and cultural continuity. The poems further construct nature as paradoxical and multivalent, possessing both life-sustaining and destructive capacities. Natural phenomena are represented not merely as physical realities but as symbolic forces that shape human experience and ecological consciousness. The study concludes that contemporary Igbo poetry encodes a distinct indigenous ecological worldview premised on the interconnectedness of humans and the non-human world. It argues that Igbo poetic texts preserve and transmit ecological values that remain relevant to contemporary environmental discourse. The paper therefore advocates increased scholarly engagement with African-language eco-poetics, particularly Igbo literary texts, as important contributions to global ecocritical scholarship and environmental humanities.