Book review of The Language of Trees by Katie Holten

On her web site, Irish artist Katie Holten asks, “What is the language we need to live right now? How can we learn to be better lovers of the world?” One of her solutions is an progressive—and downloadable!—tree alphabet font: For every letter, she has drawn a corresponding tree.

This undertaking supplies the gorgeous visible element for The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape, “a love letter to our vanishing world,” wherein Holten gathers a various vary of writing celebrating and reflecting on all issues arboreal. There are recipes for acorn flour and gall ink, phrases from Plato and Radiohead, poems by Ada Limon and Camille Dungy, musings on cacao and catalpa timber, and a lot extra—all of it printed first in English after which in Holten’s tree alphabet, creating visible forests that characterize the ebook’s phrases. I’ve by no means seen something remotely like this work of artwork and was nodding alongside to the introduction by poet Ross Gay: “Can I tell you how batshit beautiful I find this? Can I tell you how each piece . . . each essay or poem or song becoming a forest or orchard, rattles me, flummoxes me really, with how beautiful?”