Heroes Not Zombies

In the sculpture park called Les Lapidiales some of the sculptors have written poems on huge sheets of paper and hung them from the trees at the side of the path through the forest.

This is one of those simple ideas where you wonder why you’ve never come across it before. What a genius idea!

I love art in nature. Mostly the kind of art I’ve encountered in parks and forests is sculpture, which makes sense, given the vagaries of the weather. But I’ve also seen photographic exhibitions and installations of paintings which are equally powerful. I’ve also been to sound and light installations where the path through a forest (or in one case, the botanic gardens in Edinburgh) is transformed at night with lights, lit sculpture, and music. But I’ve never before encountered works of poetry hanging from trees.

I suppose I’ve come across the occasional quotation carved into stones in the wild, or written in metal plaques attached to a seat, but not whole poems.

I love spending time amongst trees – forest bathing. It’s good for my psyche, nourishes my soul, and, as a doctor, I know it also reduces inflammation in my body and boosts my immune system……forest bathing….I’m a practitioner and an advocate.

I also love poetry. That too, is good for my psyche and nourishes my soul. It slows me down, drops me into the present moment and stimulates my imagination and creativity. From what I’ve learned from neuroscience poetry is also good for exercising the right hemisphere of the brain, something we all need to do in order to counter the imbalance between the hemispheres provoked by our society and culture.

I’ve an idea to recreate this idea in my own tiny woodland but I haven’t figured out the practicalities yet, so meantime, I take a poetry book with me into the woods. Actually, that’s not the same experience but it’ll do for now.