Lex Runciman
Native
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
If we entertain the notion that all life is sentient, and that all the earth’s manifestations share their elements from the cosmos that surrounds us, then earth itself can be understood as astonishingly, almost impossibly replete with understandings of all kinds. How do we even begin to fathom this? Given that plants sustain us, perhaps we start with them.
As the name implies, coast pines (pinus contorta) populate the Pacific coast of Cascadia, and in particular the part of the Oregon coast that I visit often. Amazingly flexible and resilient, they routinely withstand gale force winds, and their pollen in spring makes a golden cloud at the slightest touch. If you’re lucky enough to spend time in their presence, then curiosity can prompt you to wonder about the form and nature of that sentience unique to them, or at least unique to one of them – that one, the one with its own tremendous ocean view.
Lex Runciman has published seven collections of poems, including The Admirations, which won the Oregon Book Award, and, most recently, Unlooked For, from Salmon Poetry (Ireland, 2022). His poem “Green” introduces the Willamette Valley section of Cascadia Field Guide (Mountaineers Books, 2023), and he is the 2025 recipient of the Howard Poetry Award from Weber—The Contemporary West. A new volume, Light in the Evergreens, is forthcoming in 2026 from Cornerstone Press. He lives in Portland, Oregon.