Toward an Arboreal Poetics

Abstract

This is the third of four dialogues between the characters ‘M’ and ‘L’. In the second dialogue, “Planetary Poiesis”, the pair begin to discover how patterns of bifurcation in the cosmos have a deep kinship with patterns of bifurcation in human thought and language. However, the concept of arboreal poetics puts this idea under pressure, opening up further insights into the relationship between bifurcation and poiesis. Moreover, the term arboreal poetics (not unlike zoopoetics) has the potential to point in several directions at once. The aim here is to imagine several possible categories that can help map the vast terrain of the relationship between trees and poiesis.

As in Forests, So in Verse: Clearings and the Poetics of Lack in Finnish Forest Poetry

“…Aaron M. Moe, who has done extensive research on nonhuman poetic agency, clarifies that 'poetics' refers to the study of 'poiesis', which in turn encompasses acts of making and creating. In the arboreal and sylvan contexts, poiesis means not only human creativity but also all kinds of functions of trees where humans can find inspiration, conceptual and narrative contents, multisensory physical closeness and companionship (Moe 2022).…”

“…Ecopoetics, which studies the ways nonhumans affect poetic creativity and writing (Middelhoff and Schönbeck 2019, pp. 15-24), has recently been focusing on questions regarding vegetal poetic agency and conceptualising it as phytographia (Vieira 2015), plant script (Ryan 2017), phytopoetics (Jacobs 2019), arboreal agency (Ryan 2022) and arboreal poiesis (Moe 2022).…”