The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape

Katie Holten

Tin House Books

Trees embody many of the things humans find themselves missing: stillness, collaboration, patience, clarity, peace.

In the introduction to “The Language of Trees: a Rewilding of Literature and Landscape,” Ross Gay adds gratitude to the list. He calls the book, and the tree typeface it introduces “an immense gratitude.”

The over 50 texts in this collection are filled with gratitude, wonder and respect for the natural world, and artist and anthologist Katie Holten has literally translated them all into tree language.

Holten has created a tree alphabet. For each of the 26 letters in the alphabet she has assigned an elegant drawing of a tree. Apple is for A. Transformed by the alphabet Holten has designed, these essays, poems and quotes are translated into forests and groves, a fusion of arboreal art and thought.

Included texts come from writers, thinkers and poets from over centuries and continents, from Greek philosopher Plato to American environmentalist Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Indian writer (and aspiring tree) Sumana Roy to English band Radiohead. The threads connecting them all are language and trees, the power of words and of nature.

Shorter poems and quotes become stately stands of trees, while longer prose pieces grow into great forests with dense woods and airy openings.

The book offers the magical experience of reading it in a tree language but the alphabet is also an invitation. The tree alphabet may be a new way for us to think and write about our own connection to nature.