Poet and writer Níyì Ọ̀ṣúndáre recently stopped by The Green Room to share some poetry and personal thoughts on the current circumstances bedeviling humanity.

See below.

The event, “What the Earth Said: A Reading and Conversation with Níyì Ọ̀ṣúndáre,” was put together by the Green Institute and moderated by Tósìn Gbogí, an Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies at Marquette University. Directed by Dr. Adéníkẹ Akínṣemólú, the Institute runs a monthly online forum called the Green Room, now in its third edition, through which it fosters discussions about the dying state of the earth and what needs to be done to stem this. 

Ọ̀ṣúndáre is a foremost African poet whose work has been widely acknowledged for its environmental concerns and motifs. He uses the earth as an organizing principle in his poetry—a principle which allows him to pay attention to, and even question the binary understanding of, the human and non-human dimensions of our world. Ọ̀ṣúndáre’s conversation at this event revolved around this principle, which allowed him to speak about subjects as varied as childhood memories in Ìkẹ́rẹ́-Èkìtì, Hurricane Katrina, the Amazon burning, and the perils of a city like Lagos that continues to borrow the sea as its land. 

The live event was widely attended and shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The poems were read in both English and Yorùbá.