Ecology, Theology, and Creaturely Belonging in Kathleen Jamie and Âşık Veysel

ABSTRACT This article examines how poetry can contribute to theological accounts of human belonging within creation. It compares the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie with the Turkish minstrel Âşık Veysel, whose work emerges from Anatolian oral poetry and an Alevi‐Bektaşi religious milieu. A problem‐oriented comparative close reading brings Jamie's “The Dipper” and “The Stags” into dialogue with Veysel's “ Kara Toprak ,” with “ Fianuis ” extending the discussion to mortality and bodily contact. Jamie's encounters test the limits of perception, possession, and poetic transmission; Veysel's agricultural imagery places productive but potentially injurious labor within soil's fidelity and divine generosity. The comparison engages apophatic ecotheology, the creaturely theologies collected in Divinanimality , Elizabeth Johnson's community of creation, and Philip Hefner's created co‐creator. The poems qualify these theological approaches by distinguishing shared belonging from responsible conduct within particular relations. Withdrawal, necessary intervention, and contact with an unresponsive animal body demand different judgments. Veysel's refrain makes the persistence of a sustaining relation answerable to the question of human fidelity in return. Material provision, poetic forgiveness, and theological grace remain distinguishable throughout the comparison. Creaturely belonging emerges as a responsibility exercised within incomplete knowledge, bodily need, and finite agency, extending beyond gratitude for what other lives and earthly processes provide.