Over a period of several months poets were invited to write new poems in response to the 1217 Charter of the Forest, to trees or woodland of personal significance to them, or how trees have shaped our society, landscape and lives. They sent poems about trees in gardens and along the sides of roads, trees to climb and build dens in, favourite trees cut down. Poems about childhood, memory, history, motherhood, nationhood, law, mythology and death. Poems about turning into trees. Poems about getting lost in the woods. Poems about oak, ash, alder, pine, chestnut, birch and many more besides. They are a profound celebration of trees. A structure emerged which echoed the three branches of the Charter: Trees, Woods, People. Although many of the poems could find a home in any one of the three parts, in 'Trees' poems were gathered in which we encounter individual trees as species or organisms: their life cycles, the pleasure of standing in their presence, the act of taking them apart. In 'Woods' we meet trees en masse, go deeper into the forest and get lost in the beauty and otherworldliness of ancient woodland.
A number of poems take inspiration from the original 1217 Charter, soaking up the language, giving us woods haunted by foresters, hunts and pageantry. In 'People' we come out of the woods and witness how trees shape our lives: our culture, our society and our psyche. The poems are at times dark, sometimes painfully sad, and often incredibly funny.
