Diane Urbani de la Paz reviews "The Madrona Project, Volume II, Number 1"

THE MADRONA PROJECT, VOLUME II, NUMBER 1, JUNE 2021, Voices from the Heart of Cascadia
Edited by Holly J. Hughes

ISBN: 978-1-7341873-8-0
Empty Bowl Press
https://www.emptybowl.org

2021, paperback, 123 pages, $16.00

“KEEP A GREEN BOUGH: VOICES FROM THE HEART OF CASCADIA” A review by Diane Urbani de la Paz

Shaped like a coloring book, The Madrona Project, Volume II, Number 1, invites the reader to open it up at a random spot. Found inside are vivid poems, stories and reflections—scenes from one strange and lonesome year. We have before us some five dozen writers, unfurling their thoughts, without fear, across these spacious 123 pages.

 My hands, parting the book near the front, find Susan Leopold Freeman’s drawing of a salmonberry. This granddaughter of Aldo Leopold, also a music teacher, a tree planter and a preserver of salmon in remote Quilcene, Washington, puts the feelings of many into words.

 “There are two things that motivate and ground me: the ability to create and the power I feel from the natural world . . . Both my art and my connection to nature are core to my heart and life,” she writes.

This Madrona Project, named for the tree that continuously renews itself by shedding its skin, is alive with both of these things. Dropped in among the pages of text are images from visual artists: trees, birds, berries. To dip in is to find them alongside short poems and long essays from fishers, growers of food, a massage therapist, a nurse practitioner—and from internationally known poets such as Tess Gallagher. Members of the Pueblos of Acoma, Lummi, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Ohlone, Spokane, Muckleshoot and Makah tribes speak here. Former Washington State Poet Laureates Elizabeth Austen, Kathleen Flenniken and Claudia Castro Luna join them, with the current Poet Laureate, Lummi tribal member Rena Priest, ushering us into the book with her preface.

“Together, may we envision a future that hears and honors all our voices.”

In her poem “Apologizing for Paradise,” Ronda Piszk Broatch of Kingston takes the reader by the hand into the forest: (pg 47) 

Surrounded by birdsong in many languages 
walled in by forty-, fifty-, sixty-foot cedar, fir, hemlock
maples leafed out, honeysuckle beginning 
its evening release of scent . . . 

Then the poet turns her head to look at the world outside:

. . . Somewhere a police officer presses
his knee into the neck of a Black man . . .

 Nature offers solace, if fleeting. So does a community of writers and other artists. Kristen Millares Young writes: “Resilience is a quality cultivated under duress, over time, against the odds and in community. To hold space for story is a sacred duty and a real joy in my literary life. . . .” These words are an excerpt from her introduction to the 2020 collection Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature. 

 Young, a journalist and writing teacher, issues a challenge to us: “To hold space for your own story can be a revolutionary act,” she writes.

 After reading a piece or two or five, close the book and behold the cover art again. It’s Valley of Love in Birdland by Linda Okazaki of Port Townsend, who was inspired by the epic poem, The Conference  of the Birds, by the Persian Sufi poet Farid Ud-Din Attar. Inside the front cover, the artist explains that she made this painting for this book in particular, “holding the concept of love as a strong departure out of the pandemic.”

 Her Valley is populated with green, gold, white, black and red beings, a shimmering stream flowing throughout. “The idea,” Okazaki writes, “is to engage our imagination with ruminations of whatever livens the heart.”

 Kathleen Alcalá, an author who lives on Bainbridge Island, likewise sings of communing with nature— just outside her door: (pg 102-104)

 “. . . I can see the madronas and Douglas firs waiting for me. Around the corner is the big-leaf maple, stalwart, usually silent, but expressing her opinions clearly . . . This is private, my relationship with trees. It is my refuge when people get to be too much for me,” her essay, “Ancestors and Strangers,” begins. 

 “What the forest and its cultivated edges say to me is: Listen. Pay attention. We are here for you, but you must not take us for granted. Do not waste this time or place. . . . Yes, you can walk among us and listen to the wind in the treetops . . . and weave your own stories.”

 The subtitle of this book is a Chinese proverb: “Keep a green bough in your heart, the singing bird will come.” In her introduction, editor Holly J. Hughes invites readers to do just this. If you can barely see the light’s glimmer, she seems to say, read these messages from those who walk beside you. 

 “I hope our songs will spark your imagination, rekindle, and breathe life into these embers of hope,” Hughes writes. “Together, may we envision a future that hears and honors all our voices.”

Diane Urbani de la Paz is a journalist and photographer living in Port Townsend, Washington. Her first book, All My Love, will be published in 2022.