Okay, I admit the blog title makes even me groan. But it was either that or Poe-tree, as both leafed friends (yes, that’s trees and poetry books)) have very much been the theme of the past week.
The reason? Well, our MA homework this week was to write a tree poem. Okay, so the precise instructions were a little more specific than that but that was the starting point and for once (poor pun alert) this exercise left me unusually stumped!
It’s not that trees aren’t inspirational – it’s almost the exact opposite.
Stunning tree poems include the examples given as part of the exercise: Philip Larkin’s ‘The Trees’ (http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7109 ), Tomas Transtromer’s ‘The Tree and the Sky’ (which I’ve found online at: http://bookeywookey.blogspot.com/2007/06/meeting-places-poems-of-tomas.html ) and John Ashbery’s ‘Some Trees’ (http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/some-trees.html). But then there’s also Don Paterson’s ‘Two Trees’ which open his collection Rain, Michael Symmons Roberts’s ‘To Skin a Tree’ in his collection Soft Keys and a range of ‘tree’ poems in Jo Shapcott’s Costa Book Awards Winner collection Of Mutability. (One of these poems, ‘I Go Inside the Tree’, can be found at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookprizes/8283044/Costa-Book-Awards-Jo-Shapcotts-Of-Mutability-extract.html). ) I’d also recommend Worcestershire poet Jenny Hope’s ‘Forest Seamstress’ (http://www.poetrymaker.co.uk/poems.htm ) and ‘Self-Portrait as a Smooth-Skinned Beech’ from her collection Petrolhead.
This is, of course, a very pruned list of the many fine tree poems out there. Add in the fact that I have ‘The Tree Surgeon’ poem in my collection Into the Yell, not to mention others not in Into the Yell (a global warming tree poem, a pregnancy tree poem, myth tree poem and actual tree tree poems, including some of my recent small stone poetic snippets,) and the challenge of trying to find a new approach becomes even trickier. Even though winter/ spring is a time of year when trees seem to particularly make their presence felt – darks skeletons stark against the skyline, the first green unfurling, birds singing – the way through the poetic forest was far from clear to me.
So did I fight my way through? Yes! How? I kept chipping away at that wooden writer’s block. Will what I’ve written stand any test of time? Probably not but like many early draft ‘poems’ it may, hopefully, bear some seeds for the future. Certainly, it was worth battling on just for the joy of coming out the other side and I’m sure it won’t be the last time I look to trees for poetic or photographic enjoyment or inspiration.
Anyone with an interest in trees, be it for environmental, heritage or inspirational reasons, may want to check out this stunning online slide show on the ‘Oxford Today’ website at: http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/photocomp/index.html#s1 .
There is also an online campaign against plans to sell off national forests at http://38degrees.org.uk/pages/save_our_forests_action_centre.
Finally, on the topic of trying to protect the world we live in and the animals that live in it, the Tiger, Tiger project website has a new look. This is well worth checking out at: http://tigeraria.weebly.com/ for information about how to help save this endangered species as well poetry, fiction and art reminders of how amazing the tiger is.
