Author(s): Katie Holten

Trees | Art | Literature

The Language of Trees is a gorgeously illustrated homage to the hidden wonders of the forest and our indelible connection to trees, filled with prose, poetry and art from over fifty collaborators, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Elizabeth Kolbert, Amitav Ghosh, Richard Powers, Suzanne Simard, Gaia Vince, Tacita Dean, Plato and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

In this deeply thoughtful collection, artist Katie Holten gifts readers her visual Tree Alphabet - made of the trees themselves - and uses it to masterfully translate and illustrate these pieces from some of the world's most exciting writers and artists, activists and ecologists.

Holten guides us on a journey from prehistoric cave paintings and creation myths to the death of a 3,500 year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to the language of fossil poetry. In doing so, she unearths a new way of seeing the natural beauty that surrounds us and creates an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away.

The Language of Trees is an astonishing fusion of storytelling, knowledge and art that reveals how these living, feeling, communicating beings make our world, change our minds and rewild our lives.

'A visual reminder that, like strong oaks from little acorns, we still can create the world in which we wish to live.' Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Review:

'A thing of beauty... visually and cerebrally immersive.' Sunday Independent
'immersive, celebratory and timely ... beautifully illustrated by Holten' The Observer
'A masterpiece' Max Porter
'A visual reminder that, like strong oaks from little acorns, we still can create the world in which we wish to live.' Kerri ni Dochartaigh

Author Biography: KATIE HOLTEN is an artist and activist, born in Ireland and living in New York City and Ardee, Ireland. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Dublin City Gallery: The Hugh Lane. Her drawings investigate the entangled relationships between humans and the natural world. She has created Tree Alphabets, a Stone Alphabet, and a Wildflower Alphabet to share the joy she finds in her love of the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in the Irish Times, New York Times, Artforum, and frieze. She is a visiting lecturer at the New School of the Anthropocene. If she could be a tree, she would be an Oak.