It comes as no surprise that humans often look to the wilderness when writing poetry. After all, what is more reflective of our humanity than the natural forces of our earth, oceans, mountains, and animals?
Our physical environment has always been impossible to neglect in poetry and serves at base level as a setting in which to develop a concept or plot. Yet even beyond that, nature can surface as a metaphor for human experience. Furthermore, nature often emerges as an extraordinary entity which we attempt to translate into poetic language.
Two forms through which writers have explored the wild in poetry are nature poetry and ecopoetry. These two subgenres share similarities, but they are not quite the same. Let’s take a closer look.
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What Even Is Nature?
The truth is that, while ever-present, the concept of nature is elusive. The Oxford English Dictionary offers four different definitions with fourteen sub-definitions. Perhaps most relevant to our discussion on nature poetry are definitions IV.11.a. and IV.11.b.:
IV.11.a. The phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the earth itself, as distinguished from humans and human creations.
IV.11.b. More widely: the whole natural world, including human beings.
So, when we use the word nature in this exploration, we’re referring to the entirety of the physical world and the phenomena that result from its governing forces.
What Is Nature Poetry?
The focus of nature poetry is, well, nature. On poets.org, Wendell Berry states that the genre can be defined as poetry that “considers nature as subject matter and inspiration.”
Nature writing in the general sense is rooted in early humanity, emerging within oral traditions and mythology. Around the end of the 18th- century through the mid-19th century, when the Romanticism movement flourished, the genre was popularized as its own poetic form. In The Beginnings of Nature Poetry in the Eighteenth Century, George G. Williams shares:
Mankind has always taken an interest in nature; but not until the eighteenth century did the interest in nature become an elaborate cult, a self-conscious worship. Mankind has always loved nature; but not until the eighteenth century did the love of nature blossom out into a dependence on a great personified Nature for wisdom, spiritual comfort, and holiness, into an ability to derive from Nature and objects of the natural world religious enthusiasm, moral goodness, and mystical understanding of both man and God.
Williams suggests that, during the Romantic period, nature shifted from a mere physical setting to a spiritual, moral, and psychological guide for humanity. James Thomson’s poem The Seasons (1730) is an early nature poem that would later inspire Romantic poets for decades. William Wordsworth would go on to revolutionize English literature by spearheading Romanticism, with a particular interest in exploring the human relationship to nature throughout his work.
Yet nature poetry is much more than Romanticism. The Japanese haiku master Matsuo Bashō produced an extensive body of nature poetry, most famously known for The Old Pond. American poet Mary Oliver could capture the overlooked nuances of the wild like no other, a talent that earned her a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her collection American Primitive. Rabindranath Tagore from Kolkata in West Bengal won a Nobel Prize for his spiritual verses about the natural world in Gitanjali. The critically acclaimed poetry of Muscogee Nation member Joy Harjo from Tulsa, Oklahoma “inhabits landscapes" by incorporating indigenous mythology and storytelling. And we must never forget the Persian mystic nature poet Rumi, whose imaginative, lyrical words have inspired endless respect and love for our earth.
What Is Ecopoetry?
A similar but not quite identical genre is ecopoetry. If in nature poetry the natural world serves as a central topic and source of inspiration, ecopoetry–or the broader associated movement known as ecopoetics–focuses on the relationship between human activity and the environment that produces it, typically emphasizing an environmental or ecological message.
The term was coined in 2001. Editor and ecocritic Jonathan Skinner founded the journal ecopoetics, known for “exploring creative-critical edges between making (with an emphasis on writing) and ecology (the theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings),” which published poetry, essays, fiction, translation, and interviews through 2009. In a 2013 interview with the Poetry Foundation, Skinner shared:
For me, ecopoetics is not exclusively a writerly practice. It’s the question of how creative endeavors can contribute to learning how to be at home on the planet, learning how to be better neighbors to our fellow species on the planet. To get over this thing about being alien intelligences on some strange exotic rock somewhere.
So while nature poetry serves primarily as a mirror, refuge, or muse for the human mind, ecopoetry recognizes humans as biological organisms entangled within the environment, and writing as a tool for reckoning. Associated with the movement are poets Wendell Berry, Camille T. Dungy, Forrest Gander, Brenda Hillman, Ed Roberson, and Juliana Spahr.
Entries in the form of either nature poetry OR ecopoetry are eligible for our Environmental Writing Competition for teens, sponsored by Patagonia, open through November 23rd, 2026. Winners receive cash prizes and recognition across our platforms.
About the Author
Tula Jiménez Singer is the Marketing and Administrative Coordinator at Write the World. She graduated from Northeastern University with a Bachelor of Science in Linguistics in 2025, where she focused on Cuban Spanish discourse and dialectology. Before Write the World, she worked in editorial content and journalism at various organizations, including The Boston Globe and The Climate Justice and Sustainability Hub. She also served as President of Artistry Magazine, a university publication exploring global arts and culture. She lives and breathes for writing: since she joined Write the World as a young writer in 2019 while living in Havana, Cuba, she continues to write stories about the Marvelous Real, Cubanism, human culture, and identity.
