Seeds & Roots, Edited by Ella Duffy

Description

The germination of a seed is not a quiet event. It is a swelling, a splitting, an eruption. At a time when so many are working to rebalance seed sovereignty and poets are writing with radical energy about the earth, Seeds & Roots is an essential addition to our ways of valuing, seeing, and noticing. In the first in a series of new anthologies, Ella Duffy selects 24 poems which allow us to feel, look, and think again about seeds and roots: with birds, soil and breezes as the first gardeners and farmers. “Something in the field is working away”, writes Jennifer Chang in ‘Pastoral’ – and in work by Alice Oswald, Camille T. Dungy, Ada Limón and many others, we experience new worlds, personal and political, in the ground beneath our feet, through poems by Suna Afshan, Elizabeth Bradfield, Oliver Baez Bendorf, Vahni Capildeo, Jennifer Chang, Camille T. Dungy, Isabel Galleymore, Aeon Ginsberg, Lavinia Greenlaw, Jen Hadfield, Luisa A. Igloria, Major Jackson, Donika Kelly, Suji Kwock Kim, Ada Limón, Andrew McMillan, Pauli Murray, Alice Oswald, Ruben Quesada, Kay Ryan, Ed Roberson, Truong Tran, Nikki Wallschlaeger and Warda Yassin.

 

Acknowledgements and errata for Seeds & Roots

‘Root’ by Suna Afshan, reproduced by permission of the author. Revised version of poem, first published by Wild Court in 2020.

‘Mandatory Purification Ritual’ by Elizabeth Bradfield from Toward Antarctica, Red Hen Press, 2018. Reprinted by permission Red Hen Press.

‘Evergreen’ by Oliver Baez Bendorf from Advantages of Being Evergreen. Copyright © 2019 by Oliver Baez Bendorf. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, www.csupoetrycenter.com

‘Seed, for Maya’ by Vahni Capildeo from Venus as a Bear (2018) is reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press, Manchester, UK.

‘Pastoral’ by Jennifer Chang first published by the New England Review. The History of Anonymity copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Chang. Reprinted by permission from the University of Georgia Press.

‘Post Modified Food’, pp. 58-60, from Smith Blue, by Camille T. Dungy, a book in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, co-published by Crab Orchard Review and Southern Illinois University Press. Copyright © 2011 by Camille T. Dungy.

‘Harvest’ by Isabel Galleymore from Significant Other (2019) is reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press, Manchester, UK.

‘Poem in Which I Transition into a Succulent’ by Aeon Ginsberg, reprinted by permission of Aeon Ginsberg. First published in wildness, 2018, issue 13.

‘Hayseed’ by Lavinia Greenlaw, reprinted by kind permission of Lavinia Greenlaw. First published in The London Review of Books, 22 May 1997, and then in A World Where News Travelled Slowly (1997, Faber & Faber).

‘Hydra’ by Jen Hadfield from Byssus (Picador, 2014). Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

‘Where the Seed Scattered’ by Luisa A. Igloria from Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (SUI Press, 2020) reprinted with permission of Southern Illinois University Press and the poet.

‘Urban Renewal XIII’ by Major Jackson from Hoops (WW Norton, 2006). Reprinted with permission of Major Jackson.

‘Love Poem: Centaur’ by Donika Kelly from Bestiary. Copyright © 2016 by Donika Kelly. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org

‘Rice-Field Road at Dusk’ by Suji Kwock Kim reprinted by permission of the poet. First published by Poetry, November 2014.

‘Ancestors’ by Ada Limón from The Carrying by Ada Limón (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. www.milkweed.org

Extract from ‘the knotweed sonnets’ from pandemonium by Andrew McMillan published by Jonathan Cape. Copyright © Andrew McMillan 2021. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

‘Returning Spring’ by Pauli Murray, reprinted by the permission of The Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency as agent for the author. Copyright © Pauli Murray, 1970.

‘A Winged Seed’ by Alice Oswald from Woods etc. (2005, Faber & Faber). Reprinted by permission of Alice Oswald.

‘The Riots’ by Ruben Quesada originally appeared in Next Extinct Mammal by Ruben Quesada, Greenhouse Review Press, 2011.

‘City Eclogue: Words for It’ by Ed Roberson, reprinted by permission of Ed Roberson.

‘In Case of Complete Reversal’ by Kay Ryan. First published in 2014 by Poetry. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

‘what remains two’ by Truong Tran from Placing the Accents (Apogee Press, 1999). Reprinted by permission of Truong Tran.

‘Rogue Corn’ by Nikki Wallschlaeger. First published by Poetry in 2020. Reprinted by permission of Nikki Wallschlaeger.

‘Searching for My Father’s Tree’ by Warda Yassin is from Tea with Cardamom by Warda Yassin (Smith|Doorstop, 2019). Reprinted with permission of Smith|Doorstop.

Errata:

On p18, in ‘Searching for My Father’s Tree’ by Warda Yassin, ‘Its study bark’ should be ‘Its sturdy bark’.

On p35, in ‘Love Poem: Centaur’ by Donika Kelly, ‘by which i mean’ should be ‘by which I mean’.

With apologies to the poets.