Glossary of Poetic Terms

Ecopoetics places emphasis on drawing connections between human activity—specifically the writing of poems—and the environment that produces it. It arose out of the increasing awareness of ecology and concerns over environmental disaster in the late twentieth century. As a multidisciplinary approach that includes thinking and writing on poetics, science, and theory as well as particular attention to innovative approaches common to conceptual poetry, ecopoetics is related to but not the same as nature poetry.The influential journal Ecopoetics, edited by Jonathan Skinner, publishes writing that explores “creative-critical edges between writing (with an emphasis on poetry) and ecology” and features poets such as Jack Collom, Juliana Spahr, and Forrest Gander.In his introduction to a collection on ecopoetry and water, Forrest Gander writes, "there are, of course, long traditions of pastoral or “nature” poetry in both Eastern and Western-language literature. But whereas 'nature poetry' often takes for its themes the so-called 'natural world' as though it were separate from the human world, ecopoetry asks how we are involved in—and a part of—all that surrounds us. Ecopoets attempt to offer insights, both formally and thematically, into the complex interrelationships between nature and culture, language and perception."