Poetry and sustainability: Literary initiatives in Spain and in Italy

Abstract

Sustainability and climate change permeate all fields of society. There have been, both in Italy and in Spain, numerous poets whose work revolved around the topic of nature and its abuse at the hands of humans. The goal of this article is to shed light on different initiatives that have developed both in Spain and in Italy to understand their value within society and the literary world. To this purpose the beginning of the article offers a definition of ecopoetry, a term coined to describe this type of poetry and introduces several poets whose works are directly linked to ecology. Finally, the article studies two recent initiatives, “Poetas por el Clima”, founded in the city of Cordoba (Spain) and “Festival Europeo della Poesia Ambientale”, held in Rome and compares them to understand the influence they have had in their respective territories of influence.