Tess Taylor on the Ancient Genre of Garden Poems and the Connective Power of Working with Plants
During the worst months of the covid-19 pandemic, when I’d suffered several losses and felt raw and isolated, I spent a great deal of time in our garden.
Read MorePoets dig into gardening themes in new anthology
SANTA CRUZ — If you truly think you shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree, a new poetry anthology might beg to disagree. “Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands That Tend Them,” edited by El Cerrito poet and avid gardener Tess Taylor, compiles many poems from classic and contemporary poets that capture the essence of gardening and the connection to the natural world. Taylor, along with local poets Ellen Bass and Danusha Laméris — who both contributed to the book — will be at Bookshop Santa Cruz Thursday for readings and signings.
Read MoreTess Taylor Talks About Her Poetry Anthology: “Leaning Toward Light”
Tess Taylor, NPR’s on-air poetry reviewer and lifelong gardener ,discusses—and reads from—her anthology of poetry entitled Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens & the Hands That Tend Them, which goes on sale August 29th. The collection features work by writers such as Ross Gay, Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, Robert Hass, Mark Doty, Jane Hirshfield, and more. In her foreword to the book, Aimee Nezhukumatathil notes that the word anthology means a “gathering of flowers,” a perfect way into this collection, which offers an abundance of writing that celebrates a tactile connection to the natural world and the way in which gardening, like poetry, can help return us to ourselves.
Read MoreA celebration of gardening in new poetry anthology
To tend a garden is to engage with hope, that this seed, pressed into the dirt, will rise and grow. It is to engage with nourishment, resurrection, beauty, and other real things of this world: sun, soil, rain, seasons. A new poetry anthology edited by poet and gardener Tess Taylor celebrates gardening and the garden in a sweeping variety of contemporary poems.
Read MoreAfter a summer rife with extreme weather events—Canadian wildfires big enough to darken U.S. skies, floods, extreme heat—readers could use a reminder that a more caring relationship with Earth is possible. They will find it in Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens & the Hands That Tend Them (Storey Publishing, August 2023), which offers a lush bouquet of verse by authors exploring what it means to garden “when the natural world is collapsing, and where...we have not yet managed to cultivate widespread abundance, nourishment, or peace,” as editor Tess Taylor writes in her introduction. Setting the tone for the collection is Ross Gay’s now-famous lyric “A Small Needful Fact,” which considers the tragic irony that Eric Garner—who was killed in 2014 by a New York City police officer’s chokehold—worked in horticulture and therefore made “it easier / for us to breathe.” Jericho Brown remembers the morning glories that his mother grew in “Foreday Morning,” Mark Doty compares weeding to a way of fighting existential dread in “Deep Lane,” and Jenny Xie counts the ways a garden “sets off the mind’s tripwires” in an excerpt from “Tending,” among other hearty selections. At the start of each section, an author offers a prose meditation and a recipe, such as Jane Hirshfield’s braised fava beans. Bright illustrations of curling green tendrils and pink and purple buds make the collection a feast for the eyes as well as the mind. As Aimee Nezhukumatathil reminds readers in her foreword: “[T]he word anthology means a ‘gathering of flowers.’ ... How perfect, then, to have this gathering, this flowering, of poems, about the connection of hand to earth.”
Read MoreGarden poetry reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz
Much like reading a good poem, caring for plants brings comfort, solace and joy to many. The Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes poets Tess Taylor, Danusha Laméris and Ellen Bass at 7 p.m. Aug. 31 at the store,1520 Pacific Ave. Santa Cruz for a reading of their beautiful anthology “Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens & the Hands that Tend Them.” The book contains an inviting selection of poems from a wide range of voices that speak to the collective urge to grow, tend, and heal, and celebrate our connection to the green world.
Read MoreIn ‘Leaning Toward Light,’ tending to life through a garden of poems. Tess Taylor's anthology gathers verse giants and local greenhorns, recipes and short essays into an almanac of living.
Read MoreLeaning Toward Light
An Interview with Tess Taylor
When my mother inherited my grandmother’s house after her passing, I spent one afternoon sitting by the long patch of plants and flowers my grandmother would tend to when I was younger. Read more…
Read MoreTess Taylor, an avid gardener and acclaimed poet, lives in El Cerrito, where she tends to fruit trees and backyard chickens.
As editor of “Leaning toward Light”, Taylor has brought together a diverse range of voices to celebrate the natural world and the human connection to it. Some of the contributors include Ross Gay, Jericho Brown, Mark Doty, Jane Hirshfield, Ada Limón, Danusha Laméris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Garrett Hongo, Ellen Bass, and James Crews.
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Read MoreLEANING TOWARD LIGHT: POEMS FOR GARDENS AND THE HANDS THAT TEND THEM, EDITED BY TESS TAYLOR
In the late spring of 2020, when everything seemed a bit bleak, I received a phone call from my old friend Hannah Fries, a poet who’d known me when I was writing poems and working on a farm in the Berkshires. Hannah is now an editor at Storey Press, and she had a fascinating proposal for me:
Read MoreLEANING TOWARD LIGHT: POEMS FOR GARDENS AND THE HANDS THAT TEND THEM, EDITED BY TESS TAYLOR
In this anthology, editor Taylor, a poet and enthusiastic gardener, gathers poems of joy, peace, and reflection about the rhythms of growth. The collection features work by Alta Journal contributors Brenda Hillman, Forrest Gander, Jane Hirshfield, Maw Shein Win, and Katie Peterson, among many others.
Storey Publishing, August 29
Read MoreThe Slowdown podcast poem feature “915: Who Among You Knows the Essence of Garlic?”
Read MorePoet Tess Taylor offered an advance look at Leaning Toward Light, her anthology of gardening poems coming out in August with contributors including Ada Limon, Jane Hirshfield, Ashley Jones, Jericho Brown, Alan Chazaro, and Camille Dungy.
Read MoreTo say Tess Taylor is a poet is reductive. Indeed, the El Cerrito-based writer’s (tess-taylor.com) work sprawls to include not just a poetry chapbook (“The Misremembered World”), poem collections in two books (“The Forage House” and “Rift Zone”), a farm journal (“Work & Days”) and the intriguing “Last West,” a book released in conjunction with the New York Museum of Modern Art’s “Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures,” the first major solo exhibition of Lange’s work in more than 50 years.
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Read MoreJoin contemporary poet Tess Taylor and author Jasmin Darznik as they discuss and read from their recent works inspired by the life and work of New Deal photographer Dorothea Lange. Moderated by art historian Dr. Sally Stein.
Read More(CNN) Like many of us who loved her, I can't remember the exact moment I fell for the work of Joan Didion. I imagine I first found her as a 16-year-old, flipping through used books at Moe's, the legendary Berkeley bookshop. But it's possible that this isn't true, because it seems like she was already there — at friends' houses, in bookstores, on bookshelves and in magazines we loved to read.
Read MoreThe following interview took place between Tess Taylor and Tom Laichas on 23 August 2021. It has been edited for length and clarity.
TL: You took courses in urban studies as an undergrad, did a masters in journalism, an MFA, and have an abiding interest in geography and geology. Yet you don’t work in a city planning Department, aren’t anchoring All Things Considered, and aren’t monitoring JPL’s seismographic equipment. Given the alternatives you might have pursued, why poetry?
TT:There is something about that life with books—with reading and being in the conversation about books—that kept calling me. There are times when I have looked for a more proper day job, but I just kept feeling I’d like to write for a few more months. That feeling has continued for twenty years! I’ve been lucky to be able to cobble together a life of teaching and writing nonfiction so I have some freedom to get some poems written.
Read MoreThroughout his political career, Joe Biden has frequently invoked his favorite poet, Seamus Heaney. Accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Biden quoted Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy,” an adaptation of Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, which posits that “once in a lifetime / the longed-for tidal wave / of justice can rise up / and hope and history rhyme.” Months later, after the brutal attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden assumed office under the watch of fifteen thousand members of the National Guard. He did not quote Heaney, but he did suggest that his presidency might usher in one such rhyming moment, and he promised to end “our uncivil war.”
Read MoreNPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with poet Tess Taylor, discussing her proposal for the U.S. moving political division through the arts.
Read More“It was really powerful to be on the road following her footsteps. It just gave me an incredibly profound respect for her grit.”
In the 1930s and ‘40s, photographer Dorothea Lange drove up and down California and across the American West, recording people and their living conditions with her camera and notepad. Eighty years later, poet Tess Taylor saw echoes of Lange’s photographs of temporary housing, migrant labor, and precarious livelihoods in contemporary California. Taylor retraced Lange’s steps, following itineraries from her notebooks. Taylor’s book-length poem Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange explores Lange’s legacy in California, combining her notes and photographs with Taylor’s lyric poetry and oral histories. The result is a poignant exploration of the social and environmental challenges facing California today.
In this episode, Tess Taylor and Getty photographs curator Mazie Harris discuss Dorothea Lange’s career, iconic images, and continuing impact. Taylor also reads excerpts from Last West.
Listen HERE
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