Olive Senior’s Transcultural Ecopoetics

The titles of most books written by Jamaican poet Olive Senior point to her passionate preoccupation with nature: trees (Talking of Trees (1985), The Pain Tree (short stories, 2015)); the canopy (Over the Roofs of the World (2005a)); gardens (Gardening in the Tropics (2005b)); plants; and birds. Her Hurricane Stories set the landmarks of hard times when poor families had to rebuild what the wrath of nature had destroyed, when single mothers organized their children’s help to mend the ruined ecosystems of their lands. Women tend vegetable gardens and build a sustainable economy to feed their families, including their improvident husbands. Senior’s transcultural ecosystem is her language to evoke the diaspora, centuries of exploitation of the Caribbean land and its inhabitants by colonization, from Christopher Columbus to modern tourism, or the lure of exile. Wasted land can be salvaged thanks to traditional values. Our thesis is that nature and women use the same strategies of rebellion, resilience, and resistance to overcome the predatory attitude of the (post-)colonizer and give us a lesson of hope and trust in ultimate victory. Senior’s creolized language itself is a transcultural ecosystem born of the hybridized cultures melded in her ecopoetics.