Naming the Trees

Poetry exploring how trees have shaped folklore and contemporary literature.

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 Môn, 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.