While copious research has explored Niyi Osundare’s eco-poetry within the framework of environmental criticism, little attention has been given to the convergence between his poetic vision and the moral-ecological concerns articulated in Laudato Si’. This article examines Osundare’s “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” and “Our Earth Will Not Die” from The Eye of the Earth through an ecocritical lens informed by Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’. Through close textual analysis, the article unveils how Osundare’s poetry condemns destructive practices while envisioning renewal, restoration, and hope for ecological recovery. It demonstrates that Osundare’s ecological poems resonate the ecological and ethical dimensions of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ as an intertextual moral approach, not from a theological stance, but as a text that calls for protecting “our common home,” deepening understandings of Osundare’s environmental concerns and the call for responsibility toward our natural world. Bringing African eco-poetry into dialogue with Laudato Si’ in this way, this article aims to expand discussions on ecocriticism, environmental humanities, and literary ecology.
