Ecological Consciousness in Poetry from Northeast India: Landscape, Indigenous Memory, and the More-than-Human World

Poetry from Northeast India possesses a distinctive ecological consciousness shaped by the region’s mountains, forests, rivers, rainfall, biodiversity, indigenous cultures, oral traditions, and rapidly changing environmental realities. Rather than presenting nature merely as picturesque scenery, poets from the region frequently imagine landscape as a living archive of cultural memory, ancestral belonging, political history, and ecological knowledge. This paper examines ecological consciousness in selected poetry of Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Robin S. Ngangom, and Easterine Kire, placing their diverse poetic voices within the broader framework of ecocriticism and indigenous environmental thought. It argues that ecological consciousness in Northeast Indian poetry emerges through an intimate relationship among land, community, memory, mythology, spirituality, and identity. Rivers, forests, mountains, plants, animals, stones, rain, and agricultural landscapes become active presences rather than passive settings. The study further examines how environmental degradation, urbanization, violence, displacement, deforestation, and developmental intervention disturb both ecological systems and cultural relationships with place. Particular emphasis is placed on indigenous ecological epistemologies expressed through oral traditions, myths, customary practices, and ideas of reciprocity between human and more-than-human worlds. Although the selected poets differ significantly in style, ethnicity, geography, and historical experience, their works collectively challenge anthropocentric and extractive conceptions of nature. Their poetry demonstrates that environmental loss in Northeast India frequently entails cultural, linguistic, spiritual, and mnemonic loss. Northeast Indian poetry consequently offers an important regional contribution to global environmental humanities by articulating an ecological ethics founded upon relationality, remembrance, responsibility, and belonging.