Teaching comparative literature through environmental poetry: Integrating Taufiq Ismail and Simon Armitage to strengthen climate literacy

Climate change and environmental degradation are global issues requiring an educational response grounded not only in scientific knowledge but also in ecological awareness, values, and responsibility. In literature education, environmental poetry provides a space to connect aesthetic experience with ecological reflection, while comparative literature enables learners to examine global issues through diverse cultural perspectives. This study aims to comparatively analyze ecological representations in the poetry of Taufiq Ismail and Simon Armitage and formulate their implications for strengthening climate literacy in literature education. The study employs a qualitative approach using comparative literature methods and close reading. The analysis draws on Bassnett’s perspective on comparative literature, Buell’s concept of environmental imagination, and Garrard’s ecocriticism. The findings reveal three shared ecological dimensions: environmental degradation, human responsibility toward nature, and ecological sustainability. However, Armitage tends to represent nature as an agent with its own presence and vitality, whereas Taufiq Ismail tends to construct nature as a sign requiring moral and spiritual interpretation. Based on these findings, the study formulates a Comparative Ecopoetry Reading Framework comprising five stages: contextualizing, reading, comparing, reflecting, and responding. The framework offers a pedagogical pathway linking literary appreciation, cross-cultural understanding, ecological reflection, and climate literacy