Forest
Feature Date
- June 9, 2023
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Excerpted from The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten. Copyright (c) 2023 by Katie Holten.
“Forest” by Forrest Gander reproduced courtesy of the poet and Emergence Magazine.
Forest was originally commissioned for, and published in, Emergence magazine.
Forrest Gander’s recent translations include It Must Be a Misunderstanding by Mexican poet Coral Bracho. His own most recent book is KNOT, a collaboration with photographer Jack Shear.
Katie Holten is an artist and activist. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Nevada Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. Her drawings investigate the tangled relationships between humans and the natural world. She has created Tree Alphabets, a Stone Alphabet, and a Wildflower Alphabet to share the joy she finds in her love of the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Artforum, and frieze. She is a visiting lecturer at the New School of the Anthropocene. If she could be a tree, she would be an Oak. Her book The Language of Trees was published by Tin House in April 2023. Read more at www.katieholten.com
"Over 50 writings from notable authors, philosophers, scientists and artists—including Plato, Ursula K. Le Guin and Ada Limón—are delicately translated into Holten’s visual 'tree alphabet' in this ode to the world’s trees."
—The New York Times Book Review
"An unexpected mix of poems, essays, quotations, song lyrics, recipes, and other texts. . . . offering diverse perspectives on those towering woody plants and their relationship to human life."
—Poets & Writers
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