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 but not the same as nature poetry. In his essay “The Future of the Past: The Carboniferous & Ecopoetics,” published in Redstart: An Ecological Poetics (University of Iowa Press, 2012), Forrest Gander distinguishes ecopoetics from nature poetry:
There are, of course, long traditions of the pastoral, poetry centered on nature or landscape, in both Eastern and Western literature. I myself am less interested in “nature poetry”—where nature features as theme—than in poetry, sometimes called ecopoetry, that investigates—both thematically and formally—the relationship between nature and culture, language and perception.
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.