My first book of poems, Tree Talks: Southern Arizona,
will be published in a few weeks by Delete Press.
I wrote a book of poems that is very difficult to read out
loud.
If you are holding one of the broadsides
that Delete Press created for tonight's reading,
and which is pictured on the screen above me,
you'll see why that is the case.
So I took the brief introduction that I wrote for the book
and added annotations, things that come to my mind
when I look at the introduction and think about the project.
I'll share that expanded introduction with you.
And I will share images from the book along the way.
Tree Talks: Southern Arizona, an annotated introduction.
This book contains transcripts of unstructured interviews
with eight Southern Arizona trees.
In 2009, I was thinking about questions and questioning.
I wanted to do creative work that would take me outdoors
and that would make me think about the biases and privileges
inherent in what I mean to say.
I decided to conduct a series of interviews,
loosely following social science qualitative research
methods, with trees in Southern Arizona, where I live and work,
and where you live and work.
As a poet and librarian, I find that the dominant culture
places primary emphasis on what humans know, what we can know,
and what we can learn.
This leads to the interpretation that everything
our world contains is up for grabs
as fodder for human knowledge.
But there is a deadly presumption in the assumption
that the world exists primarily for human consumption,
consumption by a small and homogeneous set of humans
in power.
As a student of poetry, I learned
from writers who invoke non-colonialist,
non-capitalist knowledge systems,
such as indigenous knowledge systems
and traditional ecological knowledge.
Joy Harjo, in the year 2000, wrote
a poem titled "Humans Aren't The Only Makers of Poetry," which
begins with the lines, "The young banana
tree is making poetry.
I see how it translates the wind.
The need to make songs is inherent in all life."
The poem ends with the line, "We aren't the only creatures
or the most likely to succeed."
The trees are--
Fremont cottonwood, on December 5, 2009, at 5:30 PM,
in Sabino Canyon Recreation Area,
located in riparian habitat, adjacent to the Sabino Creek
bed, which drains the Santa Catalina Mountains, north
of Tucson, Arizona.
Ponderosa pine, on June 12, 2010, at 10:55 AM,
in the Coronado National Forest, located
close to Mile 20 of the Catalina Highway, up Mount Lemmon,
on a small hill above the Palisades hiking trail,
at approximately 8,000 feet of elevation.
Goodding willow, on July 24, 2010, at 11:50 AM,
in the Patagonia Sonoita Creek Preserve,
established by the Nature Conservancy,
growing besides Sonoita Creek, at an elevation just greater
than 4,000 feet, and 13 miles north of the US-Mexico border.
One-seed juniper, on August 21, 2010, at 6:09 PM,
in the Chiricahua Mountains, overlooking Portal Peak,
on private land, backed by state land, and national forest,
a few miles east of the town of Portal, Arizona,
and 60 miles from the US-Mexico border.
Eucalyptus, on December 3, 2010, at 4:56 PM,
in Gene C. Reid Park in Tucson, Arizona,
growing to the northeast of a small duck
pond in Tucson's largest city park,
which contains a zoo, baseball stadium,
rose garden, outdoor bandshell, and numerous playgrounds
and ramadas.
Velvet mesquite, on March 18, 2011,
at 9:10 PM, a quarter mile into the Cactus Forest hiking trail,
at the east end of Broadway Boulevard in Tucson,
located in classic Sonoran Desert habitat,
adjacent to the Rincon Mountains.
Blue palo verde, on April 24, 2011,
at 7:30 AM, growing on a quiet street, just north
of the main University of Arizona campus in Tucson,
within view of the University Medical
Center and the Biological Sciences complex,
and in view of us.
It's right over there to our northeast.
And weeping fig, on June 7, 2011, at 10:08 PM,
located inside a residential dwelling in Central Tucson,
with a southwestern exposure.
The tree talks were conducted between December 2009
and June 2011, turbulent years in our city, region,
and the state of Arizona.
What was most on my mind at that time, and what I think
will most be remembered, is the April 2010 passage of SB 1070,
which mandated immigration status checks
in case of quote, reasonable suspicion, end quote,
during law enforcement stops.
With the help of a research assistant, Eric Magrane,
I determine species of interest and selected eight subjects
on the basis of such attributes as age, size, health,
distinguishing features, and habitat.
The word subject is an outmoded way
to refer to what is more commonly, nowadays,
called a research participant.
I chose to use the word subject because I believe
that questions are sites for the exercise
of personal and political power, in which one party
questions and another is subjected to questioning.
Questions are sites of aggression
and risk, as much as curiosity.
Using the words investigator and subject, I hope,
keeps our minds alive to a dynamic
that we might otherwise elide.
While allowing for the uniqueness of each research
subject, every effort was made to select species and subjects,
including introduced species, characteristic
of Southern Arizona.
Looking at a map of interview locations,
it is easy to see that the project is as much defined
by what it does not cover as by what it does.
Can you imagine how many trees take up the space
behind one of the dots on this map
and all of the space unreferenced by this map?
Each tree talk lasted approximately 20 to 30 minutes
and was conducted on site in the subject's natural habitat.
I went to the place where the tree grew, by car,
by bike, or on foot.
I spoke my questions out loud, with enough distance
from the tree so that I could see
the movements of its branches, but enough closeness so
that we were in proximity.
Questions were asked in English.
Let's note that in asking a question,
it doesn't necessarily follow that the asker understands
or even hears the answer.
When someone asks you a question,
how do you decide whether or not they want to hear your answer?
Or, whether or not their question
is even a question, in the first place.
Responses and ambient noise were transcribed
into a tree-free, one-subject notebook with pencil.
Each research subject was then briefly described
and photographed with a digital camera.
No other recording devices were used.
This book contains not translations, but transcripts.
I tried to transcribe what was within my field of sound
and sight, the movement of the tree's leaves,
the sound of its branches, the birds nearby, wind, cars,
and human voices using alphanumeric characters,
punctuation marks, symbols, and gestures as approximations.
Each page was-- excuse me-- each page was oriented horizontally
in space and vertically in time.
I acknowledge my failure to understand
the value of the information I was receiving.
And I acknowledge my respect for the value
of what I received and did not understand.
The transcripts, descriptions, and photographic images
were transferred to computer off site.
My work as a librarian makes me interested in the ethics
of documentation and preservation.
Not all records of knowledge are legitimately obtained.
And not everything that is meant to occur
is meant to be recorded or preserved.
The tree talks are intended as a site for ethical ambiguity,
in which the limitations of the practitioner,
enmeshed with an outdated paradigm, are present.
And in which something else is also present.
Separation and appropriation are present.
And relationship is also present.
I came to the study as a way to consider ethics, environment,
politics, communication, and failure to communicate.
In carrying out the work, I asked myself
how the underlying privileges and assumptions of my writing
are complicit with the dominant culture's drive
to dominate through warfare, science, or art.
The project was my attempt to enact that domination,
while also skewing away from it.
In a way, that might teach me something
about how to resist it in myself and in the world.
The poems in Tree Talks: Southern Arizona
take those assumptions to what I hope is a useful extreme.
I hope and I remain uncertain.
And so, with ambivalence and curiosity,
I share the project with you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]