Drawing on recent posthumanist theories that promote a non-anthropocentric perspective, this study examines the works of contemporary British poets Mario Petrucci and Alice Oswald. It is argued that their poetry can be described as posthuman poetry, which envisions posthuman spaces of becoming where human and nonhuman worlds coexist on a non-hierarchical basis. Petrucci’s engagement with ecocritical crises in the Anthropocene underscores the limits of human agency, and it foregrounds destructive impact of human actions on the ecosystem. In a posthuman context, therefore, Petrucci problematises the human/nonhuman binary by representing the erosion of the anthropocentric worldview in the face of environmental crises such as deforestation, global warming, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Bosco (1999), Heavy Water: A Poem for Chernobyl (2004) and Half Life: Poems for Chernobyl (2004). In these collections, challenging the perception of nonhuman matter as passive, Petrucci emphasises the agency of trees and radioactive particles. Similarly, Alice Oswald moves the reader beyond the human-centred treatment of the natural world. Rejecting human exceptionalism, Oswald’s Dart (2002) presents a polyphonic meshwork where the voices of alternating human speakers and the River Dart interweave within a posthuman space. Representing the intersubjective and dialogic exchanges between the human and nonhuman inhabitants of the Severn Estuary and the lunar cycle, Oswald’s A Sleepwalk on the Severn (2009) further problematises the subject/object binary by creating a posthuman space of becoming grounded in a communicative framework. Hence, bringing Petrucci and Oswald together, this study draws attention to trans-corporeal and polyphonic entanglements of human-nonhuman, subject-object and self-other non-binaries, and it aims to show how poetry, as a literary medium, can contribute to questioning and transforming the anthropocentric vision of humankind in the contemporary world.

Magical realism is an appropriate genre for the authors dealing with problematic themes such as memory because it is practical for those seeking for answers to these problematic questions that cannot be solved with empirical attitudes. In The Buried Giant, Ishiguro handles the chaotic nature of memory creating a primitive version of Britain where people’s memories are covered by a magical mist. This spell has an effect not only on individuals such as Axl and Beatrice, but also on the two ethnic groups, the Saxons and the Britons, making them forget the former enmity between them. In this regard, referring to the theoretical background of magical realism, this book aims to analyse the magical realist elements of the novel that enables Ishiguro to discuss the effects of memory loss on individuals and societies.