Reading Carol Ann Duffy’s “Politics” through Unnatural Ecopoetics

Authors

  • Zainab Abdulkadhim Mhana Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia
  • Rosli Talif Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia
  • Zainor Izat Zainal Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia
  • Ikhlas Abdul Hadi Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2019-2501-07

Abstract

Carol Ann Duffy is one of the most notable poets in contemporary English poetry. In accordance with her poetic dexterity, she was appointed as Great Britain’s Poet Laureate in 2009. This study deals with Duffy’s “Politics,” which was introduced in The Bees (2011), her first collection published after having been named Poet Laureate. In this poem, the poet tackled natural and unnatural imagery resultant from diverse experiences. This study proposes that the material environment surrounding Carol Ann Duffy is intertwined with her nonmaterial environment in “Politics.” This argument runs parallel with the concept of unnatural ecopoetics, which is considered to be a new direction in ecopoetics in examining contemporary poetry. The current study argues that the poet’s ideology after becoming poet laureate and also her experience as a Scottish, feminist, bisexual poet have all together configured a kind of nonmaterial environment intertwined with the material world or nature in the textual space through “Politics”. This assumption is not far from Sarah Nolan’s concept of Unnatural Ecopoetics in her book Unnatural Ecopoetics: Unlikely Spaces of Contemporary Poetry (2017). So, this study is conducted in the light of Nolan’s concept, which denotes the relations between the human, natural, and unnatural environments and the language in the poetic text. Accordingly, more focus will be on the poet’s experiences, memories, ideology, and feelings which inspired her to symbolize nature in another dimension in “Politics” as an unnatural ecopoetics poem. Keywords:  Carol Ann Duffy; Politics; The Bees; ecopoetics; unnatural ecopoetics

Author Biographies

Zainab Abdulkadhim Mhana, Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia

Zainab Abdulkadhim Mhana is a PhD student at university Putra Malaysia

Rosli Talif, Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia

Rosli Talif is an Associate Professor and currently the Head of the Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia. His research interests include feminist theory and criticism, race and gender in popular culture, and ecology and postmodernism. 

Zainor Izat Zainal, Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia

Zainor Izat Zainal, PhD is senior lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia, where she teaches Malaysian literature in English and miscellaneous other subjects related to world literature. Her research interests include Malaysian literature and postcolonial ecocriticism. Currently, she is vice president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment ASEAN (ASLE-ASEAN). 

Ikhlas Abdul Hadi, Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, University Putra Malaysia

Ikhlas Abdul Hadi is a Senior Lecturer of English and World Literature at Universiti Putra Malaysia. She specialises in fairy tale and folktale studies, gender studies, and evolutionary literary theory.

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Published

2019-03-27

Issue

Vol. 25 No. 1 (2019)

Section

Articles

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If the article is accepted for publication, copyright of this article will be vested to UKM Press, National University of Malaysia (UKM).


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