Naming The Trees (Paperback or Softback)

Poetry that takes a deep-dive into the human relationship with trees and how trees have shaped folklore and literature.

Sparked by an ongoing campaign to save the ancient forest of Penrhos, an SSSI near her home on Ynys Môn, from being turned into a holiday camp, Ness explores Welsh folklore of trees and her own love for and engagement with the trees and other wild aspects of her home, as well as more common garden flowers, which should be treated with respect (Daffodils are Dangerous).

Ness has an ongoing conversation with her native language and some poems are presented bilingually: there is a link to be made between the disregarding of native language and the disregarding of native habitat.

Far more than a book of nature poems, there is a simmering frustration at the casual way we despoil our environment without any concern for what is destroyed or the ongoing impact of that destruction.

Ness Owen lives on the island of Ynys Môn, off the North Wales coast, where she writes plays, poetry and stories in between lecturing and farming. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. We will be publishing Ness's latest collection Naming the Trees in February 2025. Ness's first collection Mamiaith (Mother Tongue) was published by Arachne Press in 2019; and her work also appeared in our anthology An Outbreak of Peace. She is one two guest editors for our bilingual anthology A470, and our forthcoming bilingual anthology provisional entitiled Afonydd.Ness's work has appeared in various journals including Poetry Wales, Red Poets, I, S & T, The Fat Damsel, Culture Matters and in anthologies published by Arachne Press, Three Drops Press, Here and Now project and Mother's Milk Books. She has had a number of short plays produced, including The Footpath (Ucheldre Rep) at The Ucheldre Centre, Holyhead, Keep Moving (Suitcase Community Theatre) at Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Goodbye My Love (Scriptslam) at Sherman Cymru, Cardiff, Shut Up (Dirty Protest) at The Bar in Galeri, Caernarfon, and Saviour's Day (Dirty Protest) at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff.Ness's poems have been performed for Solstice Shorts Festival so often we asked her to help organise, and you can find her solstice poems in: Shortest Day, Longest Night, Dusk, Noon, Time and Tide, Tymes goe by Turnes and Words from the Brink.