Genesis Revisited: Ecology, Memory, and Cultural Survival in Easterine Iralu’s Poetics

Abstract

This paper examines Easterine Iralu’s “Genesis” through an integrated approach that combines close reading with historicist, ecological, and cultural perspectives. The poem is shown to transform lament into an ethic of survival by converting grief into a sustained practice of memory. Its short lines, incantatory repetitions, and ritualised naming echo oral traditions, allowing the poem to function simultaneously as lyric and as an oral archive threatened by erasure. The analysis demonstrates that ecological and human losses in the poem are inseparable: the devastation of land, the silencing of song, and the exhaustion of the daughters collectively signify the broader historical processes that reshaped life in the Naga Hills. Through this lens, the figure of Plague becomes a composite symbol for intertwined forces of displacement, cultural disruption, and environmental deterioration. The study argues that the poem does not merely mourn these losses but proposes an actionable response rooted in continuity. The repeated injunction to “stay the songs” emerges as a disciplined technique of cultural preservation. Ultimately, the analysis concludes that “Genesis” enacts survivance by turning song into an instrument of resistance, remembrance, and renewal, ensuring that cultural identity persists even amidst historical and ecological rupture.