‘Nature poetry’ . . . ‘pastoral’  . . . ‘environmental poetry’ . . .  ‘green poetry’  . . . ‘ecopoetry’: this proliferation of names for related sub-genres highlights the diverse and changing ways in which poems construct ‘nature’ as a subject. For all their differing contexts, objectives, attitudes, and forms, such poems are linked by their common history, inherited tropes, and shared responsiveness to the natural world.

As we analyse the particularities of individual poems and explore points of connection between them, we'll consider such questions as the following: How does poetry illuminate the varied and changing ways in which humans perceive, construct, interact with, inhabit, and alter our environments?

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