September 11, 2013 UPDATE: It worked! This forest has now been SAVED and protected for perpetuity! Read the story here in the Langley Advance.
Original November 26, 2012 posting:
The Han Shan Project: An Urgent Call for Poems about Trees from Poets who Love Them
From poet Susan McCaslin (smccaslin@shaw.ca):
Han Shan was an ancient Chinese poet who posted his poems on the trees and rocks of Cold Mountain.
So in the spirit of Han Shan, poets everywhere are invited to join the urgent effort to speak for the trees of McLellan Forest East, an endangered rainforest in Glen Valley, Langley, British Columbia. It could be sold for private development and logged after Dec. 17th, 2012.
Send us a tree poem and we’ll post it on a tree in the forest. One poem per poet. Keep it to one page with your name at the bottom. Small photo of you is okay.
The poems will be put into plastic covers and hung on the trees. Published or unpublished work is fine. It’s not exactly an anthology, unless you think of the forest as an anthology.
This is the west coast, so poems about species such as fir, hemlock, cedar, hemlock, spruce, bigleaf maple, black cottonwoods are especially relevant.
Send your poem IMMEDIATELY to Susan McCaslin who can provide more information about the forest and the issue: smccaslin@shaw.ca
Background: This remarkable and ecologically important forest will be sold by the Township of Langley for private development after Dec. 17, 2012 if something radical is not done immediately to keep Council from proceeding.
If a local environmental group doesn’t raise $3 million by Dec. 16th, this forest—containing three species of owls, a Black Cottonwood tree that could be between 240 and 400 years old, and many species of plants and animals—will be sold for development and logged immediately.
This 25-acre parcel of land is currently public land. So artists, ecologists, scientists, and environmentalists are urgently trying to put pressure on the Langley Township Councillors to reconsider their decision. The Han Shan Project is part of that effort.
For further information: http://mclellanpark.blogspot.ca/
Pig Squash Press 
I tried searching for information on the species of vegetation, the ecology, the forests in that area and was lost instead in a forest of links to real estate and commercial enterprise. But I will keep looking! There was a Mother Tree taken down earlier this year in Quebec that was believed to have seeded much of the forest around Wakefield. I fear we fight a losing battle.
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As a poet hailing from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State who now lives in the forested foothills of the Beulah Valley in Colorado where there are no trees older than 200 years (although the Ponderosa Pines lifespan is approximately 800 years) this concerns me greatly. I will be submitting several poems, some from my book, Span (Rhizome Publishing 2012) and a few as yet unpublished poems.
More about my book can be found on my blog:
http://davidanthonymartin.wordpress.com/poetry/span-a-collection-of-poems-by-david-a-martin/
Oooops, just saw the one poem per poet part of the invitation.
Yes, Susan is inundated with poems right since she launched this project. She says poems are flooding in and she can barely keep up… which is a good thing. But she would appreciate just one poem per poet. But thanks for your interest and participation. 🙂
In These Quiet Hills
Silent stream rubbing sound against
boulders in the night. Water,
the falling of your clear gown
in the ravine, has taken a thimble full of eons
to touch smooth pebbles at the bottom.
Once the sea was here
in these quiet hills.
Shells trapped in dark mud,
harden into white hieroglyphics:
white memory traces of the sea.
Empire now laps at your hem
woven of dark trees and starlight.
Proud hills stand guard
and teach man your awful truth.
Let the falling leaf be his lesson.
Let the Ohlone basket woven of pine needles,
remind him of your gift.
Let him hold memories white traces
in the boned hand of his life.
© 1996 by Bruce Owens
Lovely poem, Bruce. Submit it to Susan McCaslin for her Han Shan project (if you haven’t already). Her email is: smccaslin@shaw.ca
All the best! 🙂
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