Versifying Culture

Khasi hills and Khasi culture: Reconnection in Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s The Yearning of Seeds

“…The idea behind ecopoetry is that it is a kind of nature poetry that expresses ecological concern and raises awareness about ecological issues such as urban sprawl, nuclear proliferation, species extinction, and other potential issues (Bryson, 2002: 2–3). Ethnopoetry engages with multitudinous aspects of a culture, such as the embedded wisdom of the cultural specificities of an ethnic group; cultural continuity, which includes past tradition, present conditions, and anxiety over the culture’s future; the social circulation of discourses and sociocultural expectations; and subsistence patterns and environmental philosophy (Chakraborty, 2017: 109–10). This innovative merging of ecopoetry and ethnopoetry by the poets from India’s Northeast, especially the tribal poets, has given rise to a new type of poetry — I call it ethno-ecopoetry — which constitutes a unique contribution to Indian English Poetry.…”