Poetic Beatification of Forest: Nol Alembong's Judeo-Christian Postcolonial African Ecopoetics in “Green the Sahara”

Abstract

This paper analyzes Nol Alembong’s “Green the Sahara” from the perspective of intertextual connectivity and postcolonial African ecopoetics. Alembong is a poet for whom the texts, co-texts and contexts of Judeo-Christian religious philosophy provide an axis for the poetic projection, discussion and invariable promotion of his African/personal philosophy and culture with particular emphasis on forest. The interpretation of African ecological ideas within the praxis of Christian religious philosophy provides a platform for the understanding of African eco-culture within the context of larger or more universal customs. Using concepts of intertextuality from Gerard Genette and Ziva Ben-Porat, the paper examines copresence of texts between a biblical passage from the Gospel of Matthew and a poem by analysing how Alembong adopts and adapts the structural pattern, thematic motif, and linguistic features of the biblical text in the conveyance of a personal and cultural perspective about forest and the role it plays in the greening of desert spaces. The presence of the text from the Sermon on the Mount in Alembong’s poem activates both the text of Matthew 5 and its theological implications in the context of environmental consciousness within the postcolonial milieu.