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.

Table of Contents:
Foreword 1 Clive Anderson Introduction 3 Michael McKimm TREES Thoughts in the Presence of Trees 9 D.M. Black Kestanesi 11 Mary Woodward In the Shade of a London Plane Tree 13 Grace Nichols The Lime-Tree Year 14 John Freeman Tree Rings 15 John Greening The Elephant Tree 17 Elizabeth Cook 'On the raw shoulder' 18 Simon Armitage How to Take Apart a Tree 19 Gillian Clarke Felled 20 Philip Gross To my hand-saw's screeching a robin responds 22 Paul Sutherland 'Reader, allow' 25 Simon Armitage Forgiveness 26 David Morley Some Hope 28 Michael Laskey The Blossom Falls 29 Joanna Seldon Tree in the Garden 31 Peter Carpenter Song of the Retail Park Tree 32 Jonathan Edwards A Redwood 33 Swithun Cooper Brinsop Poplars 34 John Freeman Tree Time 36 Peter Kane Dufault The Ashground 38 Andrew Motion Alders 40 Ruth Calway Spruce Sonogram 42 Elizabeth-Jane Burnett Midland Hawthorn 44 Matt Merritt Tears I Shed Yesterday Have Become Rain 46 Helen Moore WOODS Fathoms 51 Ben Smith On Entering Duncliffe Wood 52 Stephen Boyce The Homecoming 53 Kate Potts Wyre 55 Suzannah Evans Shadow's Shade 57 Linda Saunders Regarders of the Forest 58 Jean Atkin Forest Diptych 60 Penelope Shuttle Waves 62 William Wootten The Royal Forests 63 Judy Brown Twisting Out 64 John Wedgwood Clarke Oncology - Ethie Woods 66 Lesley Harrison beetles 70 Mario Petrucci The Grace of JCBs 72 David Morley Die Holzwege 74 Peter Robinson Final Memo from the Ministry 76 James Brookes Love Poem with Beech Coppard 77 Michael McKimm Refuge 79 Stephen Boyce What Newton Didn't Notice 80 Ailsa Holland Stand 81 Matthew Griffiths The Audition 83 Claire Trevien Almost 84 Linda Saunders Among the Birches 85 Barry Patterson The Greenwood 87 Jonathan Davidson PEOPLE The Forests of South London 91 Maura Dooley Woods, and us 92 Alison Brackenbury Out of the Woods 93 Sally Flint The New Term 94 Carolyn Oulton Ash Tree 95 Richard Evans Harlow New Town 97 Vivien Freeman Collins Guide to Trees 102 Harry Man Struck 104 Helen Mort Tree, Bird, Plane, Cloud, Sky, Moon 105 Luigi Coppola Laws For Trees 106 Alyson Hallett The boy who hurts trees 108 Elizabeth Cook I Found a Tree-jinn in the Lake 110 Mona Arshi 100 mile drive to my father's care home 112 Martyn Crucefix The woman who loved trees 114 Carol Rowntree Jones Hurricanes are always given women's names 116 Patricia McCarthy Melia (an ash tree spirit) 118 Joanne Ashcroft Poem of Leaves 121 Anthony Wilson Prisoner Writing Home 122 Em Strang View from a Manchester flat 123 Harriet Fraser How the Light Filtered Through the Leaves 124 Isobel Dixon They've No Time for Trees Today 126 Martina Evans Mothers 128 Rachel Curzon Committal 129 Andy Brown The Acacia 130 Mary Woodward Notes on Contributors 131 Thanks 145 Michael McKimm