Naming the Trees
Published on 27. February 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
72 pages
978-1-913665-95-1 (ISBN)
Description
In this our imagined future we watch them sound the trees hoping for deadwood, knowing the living are always harder to cut.
- Show Us What it is to Love a Forest with Song
A deep-dive into the human relationship with trees and how trees have shaped folklore and literature. Sparked by a campaign to save the ancient forest of Penrhos, an SSSI on Ynys Mon, from being turned into a holiday camp, Ness explores Welsh folklore of trees and her own love for and engagement with the trees and other wild aspects of her home, as well as more common garden flowers, which should be treated with respect (Daffodils are Dangerous). Ness has an ongoing conversation with her native language and some poems are presented bilingually: there is a link to be made between the disregarding of native language and the disregarding of native habitat. Far more than a book of nature poems there is a simmering frustration at the casual way we despoil our environment without any concern for what is destroyed or the ongoing impact of that destruction.
- Show Us What it is to Love a Forest with Song
A deep-dive into the human relationship with trees and how trees have shaped folklore and literature. Sparked by a campaign to save the ancient forest of Penrhos, an SSSI on Ynys Mon, from being turned into a holiday camp, Ness explores Welsh folklore of trees and her own love for and engagement with the trees and other wild aspects of her home, as well as more common garden flowers, which should be treated with respect (Daffodils are Dangerous). Ness has an ongoing conversation with her native language and some poems are presented bilingually: there is a link to be made between the disregarding of native language and the disregarding of native habitat. Far more than a book of nature poems there is a simmering frustration at the casual way we despoil our environment without any concern for what is destroyed or the ongoing impact of that destruction.
Reviews / Votes
There's something extraordinary about trees; their age, their stillness, their presence. They live amongst us, full of life and mystery, bridging the deep earth below to the swirling sky above and generally we pass by them with barely a thought. But not Ness Owen. In this outstanding collection of poems, she names the trees and gives them the honour and respect that they deserve. -- Ewan Smith * Good Reads * The poems themselves are light, lovely, leaning towards the lyrical, even hymn-like, with an enmeshed sense of rhythm and metre, which fits this sense of being on the move. Underneath, however, lies the energy of anger, at how we treat the natural world, but it is fittingly channelled into these pieces and gives them energy and heft. Overall, it is effective, enlivening, and affecting. -- Mab JonesMore details
Language
English
Other
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Interest Age: From 12 to 99 years
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 5 mm
Weight
128 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-913665-95-1 (9781913665951)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Ness Owen lives on the island of Ynys Mon where she writes plays, poetry and stories in between lecturing and farming. Her work has appeared in various journals including Poetry Wales, Red Poets, I, S & T, The Fat Damsel, Culture Matters and in anthologies published by Three Drops Press, Here and Now project and Mother's Milk Books and Arachne Press, who published her bilingual first collection, Mamiaith; and for whom she co-edited best selling bilingual Welsh poetry anthology, A470