The Anthropomorphic and Therapeutic Dialectics of Nature in Alembong’sGreen Call

Abstract

This paper examines Alembong’s poetry collection entitled Green Call (2017) as
an instance, in poetic practice, of demonstrating the many shaded dimensions of
intersections of traditions and cultural diversity of the therapeutic and
anthropomorphic permutations of nature in Africa to establish the extent to which
man and nature cohabit across all cultures as far as history can record. While
green is a universal metaphor for lush, vegetation and preservation of nature in its
pristine form and all whatnots; the notion of green in this collection is far more
encompassing. Through a green reading of selected poems in the collection, the
paper demonstrates that nature (herein green) defines the poet’s sense of identity,
as well as means of interpreting life and a therapeutic balm for soul and spirit. It
is also an ideological means of navigating the vicissitude of life and travails of
existence across space and time. The study, in this guise, establishes that even
though this paper is not a comparative study, the poet has subtly debunked the
much-taunted Eurocentric hype that nature in tropical region (as Africa) is inimical
and incapable of inspiring compared to its pantheistic relevance in temperate
region (as Europe).