Joanne Allred

Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants

My poem, “Elegy for the Honey Run Trees,” is the concluding poem of a sequence of “Tree Songs”. The poems, which include the songs of Deodoro Cedar, Silver Maple, Redwood, Live Oak, Cottonwood, Plum and Apple, were composed to honor some of the trees on our three acres which burned in a wildfire that pretty much leveled the whole property. I’ve long been a lover of trees and try to listen to what they have to say. I’ve been known to put hands on their trunks and branches to feel their energies. Many of them live longer than humans do and are evolutionarily much older than us. To listen to their wisdom and offer thanks for their gifts seems prudent. To me trees are conscious beings—not in the frenzied and often troubled sort of consciousness we humans know—but aware. I often imagine them witnessing. They communicate with one another through their root systems and are a life source for oxygen breathers. And, as the ending of “Elegy” makes clear, they know how to survive.

Joanne Allred is the author of three poetry collections: Particulate (Bear Star Press), The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak (Turning Point), and Outside Paradise (Word Poetry). Her chapbook, Whetstone, won the Flume Press Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in many publications including Women’s Review of Books, Prairie Schooner and Quarterly West. She taught for many years at California State University, Chico, and lived in Butte Creek Canyon outside the city. Her home burned to the ground in November 2018 in the “Camp Fire.” Outside Paradise chronicles the experience of losing most everything in the fire and beginning again.