Envisioning the Apocalypse An Eco critical Reading of Margaret Atwood’s Poetry

The doomsday narrative and apocalyptic imagination have significantly shaped environmental literature over the past few decades, offering visionary depictions of a world transformed by large-scale ecological disasters. Greta Gaard, a prominent contemporary critic of environmental literature, emphasizes the centrality of apocalyptic rhetoric within environmental discourse. While Margaret Atwood’s novels are widely recognized for their engagement with environmental concerns and post-human ecological crises, her poetry remains underexplored in this context. This article examines selected poems from Atwood’s Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965–1995, focusing on how her poetic imagination reflects apocalyptic visions. It investigates how Atwood embeds the themes and musings of apocalypse within her poetic language, revealing her nuanced engagement with ecological anxieties and the creative possibilities of environmental catastrophe.