The Voices Of The Rivers And Mountains Of The Northeast: An Ecocritical Reading Of Mamang Dai’s Poems

Abstract

Poetry from Northeast India has multifaceted voices. Their poems portray the land through many images of rivers, trees, hills, tradition, culture, myth, and legends. The poems from the northeast also deal with an array of themes from geography to politics, myths and legends to ecology, insurgencies and militancy to peace and harmony. The Northeastern poets stand as representatives of their entire community, and their poems are not singular but the voices of the region's inhabitants. A significant characteristic of northeastern poetry is its concern with ecology. Search for identity and a sense of estrangement are also prevailing features of the current political condition in the northeast. There is a huge myth about the writings from the northeast as merely conflict literature. It comes to light only when one takes up a closer reading of the works from this region because the writers of this region explore a romantic and mythopoetic vision of their vernacular counterparts of both past and present. The common bond of poetic sensibility is predominated by love for the land, nature, myths, and narrative tribal folklore. This paper aims to show how poems of this region consciously employ ecology as a means for an assertion of northeastern identity.