Thinking with Trees

by Jason Allen-Paisant

Debut collection about Blackness, nature, and landscape from a contributor to Carcanet’s New Poetries VIII anthology.

Genres: Poetry, Nature, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 2021

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Allen-Paisant, from Jamaica and now based in Leeds, England, describes walking in the forest as an act of “reclamation.” For people of colour whose ancestors were perhaps sent on forced marches, hiking may seem strange, purposeless (the subject of “Black Walking”). Back in Jamaica, the forest was a place of utility rather than recreation:

In Porus life was un-
pastoral
The woodland was there
not for living in going for walks
or thinking
Trees were answers to our needs
not objects of desire
woodfire

But “I give myself permission / to go outside,” he writes, to notice the turning of the seasons, to commune with trees and birds, even if “there is nobody else like me / around here”. Explicitly calling into question Wordsworth’s model of privileged wandering, he injects a hint of threat into his interactions with nature. Most often this is symbolized by the presence of dogs. Even the most idyllic of scenes harbours the possibility of danger.

beware of spring
believe you are

a sprout of grass
and love all you see

but come out of the woods
before the white boys

with pitbulls
come

The poet cites George Floyd and Christian Cooper, the Central Park birder a white woman called the police on, as proof that being Black outdoors is inherently risky. There’s no denying this is an important topic, but I found the poems repetitive, especially the references to dogs. Ultimately it felt like overkill. While there is some interesting enjambment, as in the first extended quote above, as well as internal and half-rhymes, I tend to prefer more formal poetry that uses more sonic techniques and punctuation. Still, I would be likely to direct fans of Kei Miller’s work to this collection.

[Ada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Espectacular.

Un llibre que parla dels arbres i de caminar pel bosc però que aconsegueix parlar d'història, herència, territori, temps, propietat i privilegi. Crec que poques vegades havia llegit un poemari tan pensat conceptualment i tan ben executat.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this collection of poems using the writer's reflections on walks through green spaces on the edge of Leeds to consider who feels they deserve to be in that space, who gets to relax and enjoy it, who has to feel the colour of their skin marks them out of place. Who belongs in nature and who does nature belong to? The poems mentioning dog-owners really made me recognise these people, but for the poet evoked deeper memories of dogs being used against people. Childhood memories of trees and forests in Jamaica and how they are used were a fascinating contrast. An excellent book.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trees
Dogs
Dog walker
Walking in the forest
Birds
The slave trade
Murder in the AME church
In Charleston
Stones
Jamaica
Central Park
Congo

“How Lord
Did you teach the soul of the slave
To grow into a tree”

Thank you Jason Allen-Paisant

[Fari Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“some human extends its will over things/some human has made a gadget/and doesn’t remember the birds/no/doesn’t remember the birds”

[Tracy Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you appreciate nature, and are somewhat of an outsider, in both senses of the word, this collection will strike powerful a chord. I loved it. It seems the poems were written during lockdown, as Allen-Paisant muses on his/the poet's connection with trees, the silence of the woodland in terms of its absence-of-people-silence, and its natural balance and quietude. The message I got from this collection was not so much of woodland as an escape, a way to get away from it all, but as companions, friends, witnesses, healers.

The poems centre around two locations: Allen-Paisant's homeland of Jamaica, and his current home of Leeds, Yorkshire (at the time of writing). As he explores the rivers and paths of his local woodlands, other humans always seem like something of an intrusion. I get it. There are people who like to commune in the wood, who see trees as other living beings with whom communication is possible, or as Allen-Paissant puts it, 'There's a way of paying attention to plants/a way of listening to trees/a way to hold a flower in your hand... I want to know what it tells me about itself' In the same poem (Walking with the Word 'Tree') he distinguishes between how in wealthy capitalist nations nature is now a leisure commodity and how 'Our parents and grandparents planted yams/potato slips reaped tomatoes/carrots and so on.' But the poet says, 'Now I'm practising a different way/of being with the woods only/I try not to stray too far from the path...' Perhaps meaning he wants to be somewhere in the middle, relating to the woodland as a place of peace and relaxation, not to be commodified, while appreciating trees as a means of potential survival, a source of food and shelter.

The themes of trees as living beings in their own right, and as commodities to be exploited run parallel in this collection. 'Logwood' begins with essay-like prose in italics, describing a stone freize in the Clothworkers Hall at the University of Leeds of black people bearing logwood, a tree grown on Carribean slave-owning plantations, imported to Britain for dying cloth. A year later, in the middle of lockdown, the freize is gone, 'Where is that image of bare-backed men struggling with a log, their faces/exhausted from carrying the weight/& from the heat?' In the following section of the same poem, he muses on the word 'logwood' the two locations merging, '...something stirred in me/the haunting of place/by place//how they haunt the facade of this building/how I came to meet their spirit here' and 'where do histories/go/when the trees have been killed//when the logs/have become the part/we cannot find.'

The motif of dogs comes up continuially throught the book. There are four poems titled, 'Essay on Dog Walking' and dogs are frequently mentioned within poems, 'I do not always understand/what changes inside my head//when the muscle boys with pit bulls/and knives appear' (Crossing the Threshhold), and 'There are many dogs I must get past along the way.' (Finding Space III). Initially, I accepted these as intrusions to the poet's walking meditations, 'I come to the wood to reduce the speed of my head' (Going Still), projecting my own desire to be alone in nature, to avoid the potential annoyance of loud, disruptive people, not so much an objection to the dog but the owner at the end of its lead. But for Allen-Paisant, it is more than that. The word 'owner' and 'leash' has a deeper meaning. For me, it hit home with 'Plague Walks' (I admit, I was slow to get it): here, the dog is revealed, not as a cute and furry companion, but as a tool of the white man used to hunt down slaves, to intimidate, inflict violence. The simple language of, 'an old fear of what you used to be/when you used to walk in another skin/and all the fear from another skin/that comes back over and all/from a deep down struggle/not to see the dog as an enemy' horrified me to the core. The idea that the fear of 'man's best friend' could be handed down as a cultural memory was a real shocker. For me, it was very cleverly done. As a white woman, I had not thought of this. Suddenly, within the peaceful setting of the poem, 'The stream is breezy, a sound of branches, a moist slippery path' a black man was running for his life through the '...brightness and terror/where overseers follow with guns/on horses.'

In the post-lockdown world, this collection struck a deep chord. I appreciated its contrasts, its setting of nature as a source, and a refuge, and the way Allen-Paisant refuses to sanitse the danger humans pose to each other and ourselves. 'Must we imagine the night and its spirits?/Must we imagine that, because of fear,/of roaming men, more than of duppies,/imagining the night is all we will do?' (Fear of Men).

[Kelly Furniss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allen-Paisant describes walking in the woods as a ‘act of reclamation’ that he gives himself ‘permission’ to do compared to his Jamaican ancestors who were forced on black marches etc and explains how dogs were used against people to derive fear not as now, kept as pets to enjoy.
His memories of the nature in Jamaica, the trees/ forest fauna & flora is totally contrasted to that in Leeds where he now lives.
The questions he poises is who belongs in nature and who does nature belong to?. Do you feel you deserve it?. Certainly lots to think about. For me the dog parts got too much but I understand the inclusion of them. I enjoyed the descriptions of nature the most and his beautiful use of words & language. A modern contemporary poet reflecting on a painful history. I enjoyed his poems on trees the most and his thoughts on their life cycle.

[Pascale Petit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thinking with Trees transformed nature and eco poetry in the UK and catapulted it into the present. It was my favourite debut of the year and remains a book I often return to and share with students. It looks at trees and city parks through the lens of a Black man and his heritage, reminding us that it’s impossible to consider ecopoetics without including white privilege and race, and the unequal distribution of wealth and power around the globe. I loved the collection’s tender but persistent and reasoned pace, the conversations with trees and dog walkers. I’m thrilled it won the Bocas Prize, but it should have won more.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

this one knows what it's doing, plucked and placed, the way spatiality is jason's concern here & I can't think of a collection that makes it real the same sense. Almost structured like a cento, the dogs, the walk, the leaves. I enjoy that a lot and think it says more about The Collection in itself than most things Do . ..
I really like this and it's nice to see what is made of spaces with Othello more recently

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Debut collection of Jason Allen-Paisant's poetry. It is a slim book which was actually appealing to me as someone who is intimidated by, and rarely reads, poetry. The poems are his experiences and recollections of nature taking place in both Jamaica and England. This feels more like deeply personal writing than writing with others in mind per se. The poems felt more in-the-moment than laborious crafting in a study (not to say it didn't involve crafting, of course).

Most of the poems are set in woods around Leeds, England, but his childhood memories in rural Jamaica offer vivid juxtapositions. For some, ownership of space and uncontested affiliation with the landscape you inhabit is taken for granted, but Allen-Paisant is writing about being in the beauty of nature while having complexities of past and present as intrusive interlopers.

[Shabanah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a difficult collection to rate, as it’s subtly layered and I feel like it deserves more attentive readings.

I enjoyed the gentle lyricism of the poet’s voice and the meditative quality of many of the poems, with their repeated motifs of trees as bodies, walking, breathing, naming, light, skins, streams, birds (especially ravens), snakes, rhododendrons and so on - to the point where I felt like I was reading one, long exploratory poem in which the poet journeys towards ever-deeper connection to the spirit of nature, a place transcending time, ethnic differences and painful histories. He asks critical questions about why a black man like him who grew up deeply connected to nature in the Caribbean, (and where many poets like Derek Walcott write with confidence about their natural environment) in Britain feels, or is made to feel, that it’s a place where bodies like his don’t belong. In that sense, the poet is offering a valuable new political perspective on the Romantic poetic tradition. However, I think he does it with more subtlety in the poems where he isn’t directly commenting on Wordsworth’s daffodils - those where he listens with all his senses, and experiences a spiritual, almost divine connection with nature. I feel that in poems like ‘Treeness’ and ‘Roots’, in which the rich, vivid diversity of a tropical seashore inspires almost rhapsodic, but fully earthed images:

‘the silver sand sings
a lone seaside pine on a butte
blooms into a parasol
my heart is a jumble of rocks’.

The poems that resonated immediately with me were those describing alarming encounters with dogs. In fact, this collection was recommended to me by a friend seconds after just such an incident while we were walking in my local park! My fear of dogs comes from my very different South Asian Muslim roots and upbringing, so it was fascinating to follow Jason Allen-Paisant into his symbolic journeys back into the Caribbean past and slave history to learn about the particular reasons for his attitudes to dogs and nature. Despite the difference in cultural heritage, I recognised many commonalities - a relationship to both that’s more about flight and survival, or work and practical need, rather than freedom and leisure time. I feel so grateful to the poet for giving voice to the tension many black people and people of colour feel around dogs, anxieties which thankfully are easing down the generations as more of us become pet owners. He also captures well our often ambivalent feelings about venturing into some natural, rural environments where we are in the minority. Of course, for a black person, that alienating ‘double consciousness’ of having to watch themselves being watched is even more profound.

I feel the poet captures extremely well the rush of complex feelings any person of colour, but especially a black man, might experience in a sudden encounter with a dog in his most personal poems. Take for example ‘Essay on Dog Walking (II)’, about walking in his local park in Roundhay, Leeds, a place I too have walked several times. He describes the moment he is confronted by a dog he fears will attack him, and feeling estranged from himself because ‘inside my body/ another man starts running’. I have also felt a similar kind of inner terror and anger, especially when white dog owners who are baffled - even offended - by my fear, as if I have some kind of personal animus against their foor-footed friends, claim ‘They won’t hurt you’. He makes his own palpable in gaps on the page in the short tense phrases at this point, and I felt I could hear his rapid breathing in the silences. In contrast, his poem ‘On Property’, about the notorious clash in Central Park, New York between a white female dog-walker and a black male bird-watcher, lacks the same direct authenticity. It doesn’t for me offer any radical new insights like in the first poem, when he suddenly plunges from Leeds deep into Caribbean history, with the startlingly ironic story of Cerberus the Jamaican dog-trainer whose dogs are terrified of him.

All this leads to a creative tension at the heart of the collection. On the one hand, there is the poet’s anxiety when alone and vulnerable in places he’s been socialised as a black man to think he doesn’t belong, or is physically under threat - paradoxically for being perceived as a threat by white people. On the other, there is his sense of his own equal birthright to the time and freedom to enjoy nature, not as an act of survival but of pure existential pleasure, to feel a spiritual oneness with nature, to breathe with the trees that seem to embody its very soul. I could relate intensely to his ongoing struggle to overcome the tensions and fears within himself and others towards him, in order to simply be in nature, and merge safely into its infinity.

A collection that’s well worth a read, and has given me much to think about….

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Interview with Jason Allen-Paisant for the NGC Bocas Lit Fest's Bios & Bookmarks [November 2021]

Jason Allen-Paisant's poems cut a verdant line through the concrete of our anthropocene, asking questions that feel gentle in the hands but bruise the soft places of the heart: where does the Black man's body belong in contemporary Albion? What can a man do to defend himself from mastiffs with maybe more rights than him? What do the squirrels, the airplanes, the rustling leaves, have to say about all this?

These poems seem pastoral, gentle. They are that, but that is not all they are: that is their habitation. What they serve is a sharp penetration of regard, a refusal to let indolence and easy rest lie, a green song with fluttering hummingbird wings of reckoning. Everyone who professes to love nature and poems should read this work.

[Rol-J Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jason Allen-Paisant’s Thinking With Trees is a tremendously beautiful and well-constructed collection of poems. It is deeply historical as much as it is contemporary and forward-looking. It is emotive, emotional and it leaves you wanting more, while at the same time, you have to take long pauses to reflect on the deeper messages of Black bodies being tied to this dangerous earth like trees are via their roots. It traverses the suspicion Black people face in what should be considered mundane environments such as dog parks and hiking trails, covered and entrapped by trees and their foliage, much like Black people are covered and entrapped by the unfounded suspicion of others.

Overall, Allen-Paisant ensured this was traditional and historical, yet modern. I definitely recommend this for reading.

[naima · Rating 4 out of 5]

the more the themes returned the more i found myself immersed in them.. a lot of thoughts n feelings abt the idea of leisure and time… and white people and their dogs

[Zoë]

That titlt is clearly missing a reference to dogs