McLellan Park Forest

It has been a couple of weeks since I posted my No-Comfort update, but it has been a period of rest after the end of ModPo. That was an accomplishment outside the Zone for sure, and rather carried me for awhile.

This week I wanted to share about a different kind of poem submission, this one involving a call to try to help save a the McLellan Park Forest, just outside Fort Langley, in British Columbia. This is the Han Shan Poetry Project.Han Shan translates as Cold Mountain, and the picture below is the invitation to view the poems in the forest. Han Shan was a Tang Dynasty hermit poet, according to the information I was sent about the tree poem installation.

It is always a sad thing when developers take over our forests, and destroy habitat for wildlife, both plant and animal. The call was for tree poems, each poem to be waterproofed and attached (safely!) to one of the trees in the endangered forest. There has been a lot about this in the press lately. I wanted to share information about this. I don’t know which tree has my poem, but that is not as important as showing support for this venture. Location of the forest: http://goo.gl/maps/qWM4j

To quote an excerpt from the invitation to the installation: “Poets across Canada, including several Governor General’s Award winners, responded to a call from Langley poet Susan McCaslin to submit poems celebrating trees in an effort to protect a unique forest just outside the heritage community of Fort Langley, British Columbia.

More than one hundred and fifty poems were submitted over a five day period from established and emerging poets of all ages, and are now suspended from the trees in the hope that the voices of poets will be considered when Langley council decides the fate of the forest on December 17, 2012. Currently we have almost 200 poems.

The installation was inspired by Han Shan, a Chinese hermit poet from the Tang Dynasty era over 1,000 years ago, who wrote poems on trees and rocks, living respectfully with nature. ”

Further information about the forest may be found at:
http://mclellanpark.blogspot.ca/
At Pig Squash Press, the blog of Kim Goldberg, you’ll see the post that inspired me to send off a poem.

Photos of tree installation courtesy of Erin Perry, Erin Perry @ erinperry@telus.net