Ecological Memory and Poetic Resistance in the Contemporary Caribbean Landscapes of Miller and Paisant

Abstract

This paper examines how ecological memory and poetic resistance operate in the poetry of Kei Miller’s In Nearby Bushes and Jason Allen-Paisant’sThinking with Trees. While acknowledging that postcolonial theory is also relevant to the concerns of the study, the paper adopts ecocritical theory for its analysis because it offers a more focused approach for examining the dynamic relationship between literature, environment, and memory. Ecocriticism is employed to this study, to read landscapes not as passive backdrops but as active, remembering agents shaped by histories of slavery, colonial extraction, racial exclusion, and environmental violence in both the Caribbean and the diasporic spaces. Through close textual analysis, the study demonstrates how Miller and Allen-Paisant transform natural environments into living archives that preserve marginalised histories, indigenous ecological knowledge, and black experiences. While postcolonial insights inform the discussion, ecocritical theory enables the paper to foreground how ecological memory functions through plants, forests, soil, and seasonal change, and how poetic resistance emerges through the reimagining of human–nature relations. The paper concludes that ecological memory in the above poetry becomes a source for cultural survival, while poetic resistance operates as a decolonising environmental practice. Ultimately, the study shows that ecocriticism provides an effective framework for understanding how contemporary Caribbean poetry mobilises the natural world as a site of testimony, healing, and ethical re-engagement with the environment.