In WORTH MORE STANDING, celebrated poets and activists pay homage to the ghosts of lost forests and issue a rallying cry to protect remaining ancient giants and restore uncolonised spaces. Themes of connection, ecology, grief, and protection are explored through poems about trees and forests written by an impressive number of influential poets, several of whom have attended the recent Fairy Creek blockades and still others who defended old growth ecosystems in Clayoquot Sound nearly 30 years ago. Contributors include ninth Parliamentary Poet Laureate Louise Bernice Halfe-Sky Dancer, GG winner Arleen Paré, Canadian icon bill bissett, Griffin Poetry Prize winner Eve Joseph, ReLit Award winner Patrick Friesen, Order of Canada and Order of the Rising Sun recipient Joy Kogawa, Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam, Harold Rhenisch, Jay Ruzesky, John Barton, Kate Braid, Kim Trainor, Kim Goldberg, Pamela Porter, Patricia and Terence Young, Russell Thornton, Sonnet LAbbé, Susan McCaslin, Susan Musgrave, Tom Wayman, Trevor Carolan, Yvonne Blomer, Zoe Dickinson and the late Pat Lowther.
In this eclectic grove of poems written and gathered on the body of trees, poets inflect, root, bend towards the mythopoetic, listening with love to arboreality, walking the path towards tree immersion. Make no mistake, I saw them relax their limbs and droop. Settling into their dreams. A language that will always mystify and sustain us. Enjoy this collection and touch wood. tree, tell me what have you done with death. today i ate chainsaws for breakfast. -- Mona Fertig, editor of Love of the Salish Sea Islands and 111 West Coast Literary Portraits
The tree is in the midst of an intellectual renaissance, judging by all the books on the lifeways, politics and communicative tendencies of networked forests. But poets have always been a People of the Tree, and the arboreal fund gathered in Worth More Standing covers the roots and branches of the entwined process of becoming both human and tree. Our fate and the fate of forests have never been more entangled. This is a gorgeous and necessary collection, to be returned to again and again. -- Governor Generals Award-nominated poet Stephen Collis
Within moments of opening this exceptional book of poetry I was transported to the old growth forest. I could hear the wind rustling the fir needles. I could smell the cedar. Each poem in Worth More Standing is a gift of connection, spirit and beauty. At a critical moment in our history when we battle to protect the last of the planets ancient forests, this book is a clarion call from the heart. -- Tzeporah Berman, Adjunct Professor, award-winning environmental activist and International Program Director of Stand.earth
