Phenomenological ecology in two occasional poems by Ben Okri

Abstract

This article begins with a brief discussion of the three terms: the poet, ontopoiesis and eco-phenomenology or phenomenological ecology. An explication of its thrust, viz. the significance of sowing/sewing ‘a quilt of harmony’ (Wild 2012: 20), in relation to the broad yet symbiotic theme of cosmic ecology follows. The discussion proceeds by presenting a close critical analysis of Ben Okri’s ‘Lines in Potentis’, a poem commissioned by the then Lord Mayor of London in 2002 in commemoration of the bombing of the City of London and which is featured in Okri’s most recent anthology of poetry, Wild (2012: 26-27). Both my thrust and my argument are predicated on another occasional poem from Wild, ‘A Wedding Prayer’ (2012: 20-22), which is not analysed in any detail. Axiomatic to the interpretation is the poet’s own conception of ‘wild’, cited on the dust cover of the anthology, as ‘an alternative to the familiar, where energy meets freedom, where art meets the elemental, where chaos can be honed’. More precisely, for this London loving Nigerian poet, ‘the wild is our link with the stars...’. This is not aesthetic posturing. As I attempt to show in my reading of the focal poem, it has to do with mystical unrest viewed from an eco-phenomenological ‘enjoyment of literature, of beauty, of the sublime, the elevated, as well as our compassion for the miseries of humankind, [and] generosity towards others... inspired by the subliminal passions of the human soul’ (Tymieniecka 1996). As the conclusion attempts to show, this projects some of the epistemology of Africans in Africa and the Diaspora. It does this by invoking the contentions of fellow African phenomenologist, Achile Mbembe, in comparison with Tymieniecka’s argument that the soul is the ‘soil’ of life’s forces and that it is thus the transmitter of life’s constructive progress. Such progress is from the primeval logos of life to its annihilation in the anti-logos of man’s ‘transnatural telos’ (Tymieniecka 1988: 3).