Towards a new default discourse for the earth : the poetry of Chris Mann and Dan Wylie

Abstract

The poetry collection To the foothills is in four parts, each representing an element of what my thesis terms the corporate world’s ‘default discourse’: Investment, Profit, Loss and Dividend. Although there is some inevitable overlap between these groupings, the poems are all underpinned by the assertion that a new language/discourse based on the natural world needs to replace the existing one of financial acquisitiveness. Towards a new default discourse for the Earth: the poetry of Chris Mann and Dan Wylie argues that our world is ecologically damaged as a direct result of human activities. The language we habitually employ – typically that of corporate concerns and priorities – goes beyond describing the world to actually creating a version of it that is assumed to be immutable. In the face of global warming, human over-population, the catastrophic consequences of being who and what we are, of what our languages have defined us to be, we need to rediscover nature’s own voice. Far from imposing a human ‘voice’ or language upon nature, we must find a way to echo, reflect and respect the many natural voices that already exist everywhere. Ironically, to get this vital message across we are obliged to use the vocabularies, syntaxes and linguistics already taken for granted. But we can rearrange these into poetry. I reflect how the growing academic fields of ecocriticism and ecopoetics lend themselves to establishing such a new ‘default discourse’. Many prominent scholars in these fields and others serve to support my contention. Using a selection of poems from several of their published collections, I show how the varied works of two major South African poets, Chris Zithulele Mann and Dan Wylie, already employ such an ecopoetic language. Despite differing in background, temperament and style, the two poets share a commitment to the importance of the natural environment and of ecopoetry as the best way to give it expression. Ultimately, and despite the bleak prospects currently facing Earth in the form of accelerating global warming and climate change, this thesis finds reasons for optimism, but it requires our adapting to changing realities. The first essential step towards such adaptation is to accept the pressing need for a new default discourse.