“What options for a sinking world anchored in sour carbon fossil soup?”: Climate Crisis, Petro-Capital Extractivism and the Poetics of Eco-protest in Nnimmo Bassey’s I Will Not Dance to Your Beat

Abstract

In this age of destructive consumption, the reckless extraction of crude petroleum and the consequent oil-driven modernity leading in turn to increasing climate change and disruption of ecological harmony, constitute the subjects of serious concern to all the intellectual thinkers and the environment-conscious literary artists, around the globe. In Nigeria, the most significant “oil cursed” (Michael Ross) African country, the poets along with the fiction writers have stood united against the petro-capital extractivism in the Niger Delta region. Their poetry creates anthropocenic awareness and raises its voice against the oil-induced environmental violence. Nnimmo Bassey’s volume of poetry I Will Not Dance to Your Beat (2011) is a poignant poetic account of this problem of “petro-violence” (Michael Watts) in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It reflects the idea of ecopoetry by issuing a warning about the incremental violence against the ecosystem in oil-extraction sacrifice zones and contemplating how this 'sinking world' can follow a 'sustainable path’ (Nnimmo Bassey). The theme of “eco-protest” is at the centre of Bassey’s poetry. This paper will critically examine the representation of the climate crisis, the politics of petro-capital extractivism, and the call for environmental justice in selected poems from I Will Not Dance to Your Beat, analyzing them through the lens of Petrocriticism, as outlined by Michael Rubenstein.