Selected Resources
The first layer of Hold Our Breath 2040 resources will be developed through an Irish lens, with a view toward considering the rapidly changing situation in Ireland. The least forested nation of Europe, Ireland has less than 2 percent native coverage, despite having been fully forested previous to colonisation. Currently, commercial afforestation efforts surge due to government incentives using tree-planting to offset carbon emissions, with short-term monoculture undermining the native ecosystems and biodiversity necessary for long-range regeneration. The rapid state of change due to government policies puts Ireland in a uniquely urgent position, as the complex sociological, historical, and economic relationship of Ireland to the woodlands calls for reimagining.
Irish organizations
Irish tree artists
Suggested TV and films
Money Grows on Trees
Planting trees against climate change: Ireland is reforesting its territory by growing spruces. But it's not just about being green, it's about profit. Wood is a big business... much to the displeasure of local environmental activists who want Ireland's forestry policy changed.
Tree TV
A series of episodes created as part of the 2020 Whose Trees These Are Tree Festival organized by musicians Eimear Reidy & Natalia Beylis
Suggested readings
Selected nonfiction
Earth Emotions, Glenn Albrecht
"Ecocriticism, Joyce, and the politics of trees in the ‘Cyclops’ episode of Ulysses," James Fairhall
About Trees, Katie Holten
"Hello Symbiocene, Goodbye Anthropocene," Cathy Fitzgerald
Ireland's Trees: Myths, Legends, and Folklore, edited by Niall Mac Coitir
32 Words for Field, Manchán Magan
To Speak for the Trees: My Life's Journey from Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, Diana Beresford-Kroeger
"Trees, Big House Culture, and the Irish Literary Revival" by Anna Pilz and Andrew Tierney
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, Discoveries from a Hidden World,Peter Wohlberg
Selected poetry collections
Sweeney Astray, Seamus Heaney
"Forest," by Forest Gander and Katie Holten
Trees Before Abstinent Ground, Peter Larkin
The Great Book of the Woods, Gerry Loose
selected poems from The Great Book of the Woods
The Ground Aslant: An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry, edited by Harriet Tarlo
"The Rock of Cashel," Grace Wells
In The Seven Woods, W.B. Yeats
Selected multi-genre anthologies
Arboreal: A Collection of Words from the Woods, edited by Adrian Cooper
Selected novels
Pollard, Laura Beatty
The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
Ulysses, James Joyce
Understory, Richard Powers
A Girl of Galway, Katharine Tynan