"A poet needs a tree": an ecocritical journey through Meena Alexander's 'Atmospheric Embroidery'

This dissertation proposes an ecocritical analysis of the work of Indian author Meena Alexander, focusing on the poetry collection Atmospheric Embroidery. Alexander’s literary production deals with complex and various topics such as migration and dislocation, cultural traditions, memory and trauma, the experience of being part of a minority, colonisation, decolonisation and so on. Among all the several facets of Meena Alexander’s work, there is one particular element that seems to be almost omnipresent: nature. Natural elements are present in almost every poem and represent a sort of ‘fil rouge’ in her literary production. Despite the prominent presence of nature in Alexander’s poetry and the importance that it seems to have in her life and work, there has not been much academic interest in analysing her poems from an ecocritical perspective. The purpose of this dissertation is to underline this particular aspect of Meena Alexander’s literary production and explore the way in which the author portrays and relates to nature through an analysis of the use of natural elements in her poetry collection Atmospheric Embroidery. This study will therefore create an ecocritical “path” through which the reader can navigate the poems included in the collection.