Book review: Naming the Trees by Ness Owen

Mab Jones

In Naming the Trees, Ness Owen offers us a collection that is deeply rooted – literally, figuratively – in the landscape of Wales.

These poems are not just about trees; their branches circle out to encompass language, memory, and resistance. As a result, this collection takes us by the hand through familiar woodland terrains, but then works to render that familiar ‘terra firma’ infirm, causing us to feel as if the ground is shifting beneath our feet – a direct consequence of both writer and reader realising that what is beloved in this land is also, sadly, under threat.

Not just nature, then, but the nature of ecological destruction, is what informs these pieces, with writing itself an act of defiance across poems that mourn but also offer up a rallying cry, bearing witness to our ongoing fight to save the plants and places, animals and elements around us.

Penrhos

At the heart of all this sits Penrhos, an ancient woodland and coastal park in Ynys Môn, which has been the subject of a long and passionate campaign to prevent its destruction.

Owen has been deeply involved in the fight, and this activism is woven seamlessly into her poetry as just one stark and stimulating thread in the book’s tree-filled tapestry. Thus, poems such as Elm to Stand and Fight show us trees with “leaves sharp as pins”; in other poems, daffodils are “ablaze” and, in Beech for Our Protection, “Bud burst and bud burst”, intimating gunfire, as nature continues to fight for its very life.

It does this, however, literally, through continuing to grow and be; continuing to bud and bloom. However, these are not didactic or overtly political poems, and these particular images are lightly, deftly interwoven.

Bilingualism

So, too, is a further element within this book: its bilingualism. Welsh pieces appear throughout, often in tandem with English language works, this linguistic interplay adding a deeper layer to the collection’s themes of being, belonging, and cultural memory.

In her beautiful flow and interplay of the two tongues, and inclusion of our own land’s ‘root’ speak, Owen, to me, seems to be reminding us that words themselves are a source of wonder / power, and that to know the name of something is to acknowledge its place in the world. The trees, also, have their own words and wisdom, and Owen listens carefully to this ‘tree-speech’ throughout these pages and in poems which explore the qualities of various tree species.

The intimate connection between place and self is thus fleshed out, with nature not merely a mirror to our humanity, but as something sentient and soul-holding in its own right.

Walking, Watching, Witnessing

The poems, as you wander through them, are refreshingly immersive, often moving at a walking pace, drawing the reader into a journey through forest paths, wetlands, and estuaries – “We pressed our wellies / deep into the singing mud” writes Owen in Mudprints, a brilliant example of how sound, movement, and landscape intertwine in her work, capturing a terrain which I’m sure many readers will recognise. There’s a familiar intimacy to these poems as we follow the poet through treescape after treescape, her poems offering us a sense that they are being whispered or passed down, with Owen a kind of ‘tree whisperer’ who interprets those old ones’ words as we pass.

Beyond its environmental and political concerns, Naming the Trees is a book of lively lyricism and musicality. Owen’s language is clear and uncluttered; precise and evocative. There is a hymn-like quality to many of the pieces, with a quiet reverence that runs through them alongside the simmering / shimmering anger.

The presence of mythical Welsh figures such as Rhiannon and the Mari Lwyd roots the works here in a long and fertile cultural tradition, but Owen is never merely looking back, indulging herself in the nostalgia of hiraeth; rather, her voice is fiercely contemporary, speaking in direct language and shaped by the atrocities and anxieties of our time.

The trees in this collection are both sentinels and storytellers, in a sense, therefore, holding history in their branches which this fine poet interprets: “Because forests are our home / because we will return to our trees / because we will keep fighting for our forest”. These lines echo a wider movement in Welsh poetry, perhaps: one which insists on the connection between people and place, and on the duty we hold to protect it.

The Power of Naming

It’s in the book’s title poem that we find encapsulated the book’s concerns in a single place. “Finding the words is another step in learning to see” writes Owen here, echoing the idea that language is a form of preservation and a means of ‘seeing’ our world, as linguists have also insisted. The more we name, the more we see; the more we see, the harder it is to look away and to justify what we are doing, ecologically.

The collection ends, fittingly, with a poem about the act of walking. It is a quiet yet resolute conclusion, reminding us that moving forward is an act of persistence; that to walk is to resist inertia, of many kinds. And perhaps that is the best way to describe what Naming the Trees does: it moves. It walks through the landscape, through history, through language, carrying with it the weight of what has been lost and the hope of what might still be saved.

In a time when ancient forests are being felled for profit; when language and culture are still being erased in insidious ways; a book like this is more than poetry – it is a record, a warning, and a call to arms. Owen – and Arachne Press, who you can obtain the book from – has given us a collection that is both beautiful and necessary, a book that speaks not only to the heart, but to the bones; to the roots beneath our feet. And, if poetry has the power to change anything, then perhaps it begins with us naming the trees.