Terrain Seed Scarcity opens with a selection of poems in which the concern for scarcity as a speculative edge first surfaced, and is followed by six sequences arranged in short prose clusters or stanzas, sometimes with verse tail-pieces. Four of these focus directly on trees: under the aspect of addition as a branching diversion rather than a dispersal; the co-forms of forest evoked as edge, line and verticality; plantations as parallels to a re-covered, stretched centre; a lean, denuded outcrop of trees better served by what wheels around it than by what it fails to contain. Some of these sequences are accompanied by brief essays as sideshoots or offshoots. Other poems work through the sourcefulness of an environmental sink figured also as recess or protection, and there is a set of minimalist sententiae which rework 18th century landscape aesthetics. The collection ends with a cycle of syllabic poems, ‘Spirit of the Trees’ derived from a once popular anthology. Some of the more recent material is published here for the first time.
A collection of 10 years’ work, in part lineated or syllabic but mostly in clustered prose, which investigates ontological echoes of the environmental condition of new scarcity, amid a wealth of inroads. The hoped-for terrain is where its own scarcity on the ground can set seed.
