• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Victoria Festival of Authors

An annual celebration of writers and literature

  • Home
  • VFA 2023
    • Lit Pen Podcast Series
  • Partners
  • Support Us
    • Donate
    • Sponsor Us
    • Volunteer
  • About Us
    • Our mission
    • Strategic Plan
    • History
    • Who we are
    • Contact Us
  • Archive
    • Interviews
    • Panels
    • Podcasts

Arborophobia

By Nancy Holmes

Arborophobia
Buy at Munro's

Arborophobia, the latest collection by award-winning poet Nancy Holmes, is a poetic spiritual reckoning. Its elegies, litanies, and indictments concern wonder, guilt, and grief about the journey of human life and the state of the natural world. When a child attempts suicide and western North America burns and the creep of mortality closes in, is spiritual and emotional solace possible or even desirable? Answers abound in measured, texturally intimate, and often surprising ways. The title sequence, named for a word that means “hatred of trees,” sassily blurs the boundaries between human beings and Ponderosa pines, reminding us how fragile our conceptual frameworks really are. Another sequence responds to Julian of Norwich’s writing and call “to practise the art / of letting things happen.” Saints’ lives interlace with our quotidian experience, smudging connections between the spiritual and the earthly. Taking a hard look at what we have done to this beautiful planet and to those we love, Arborophobia is a companion for all who grapple with the problem of hope in times of crisis.


Series: 2022 Books

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • SoundCloud

Victoria Festival of Authors respectfully acknowledges that we are located on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen people now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt nations.
Copyright © 2023 Victoria Festival of Authors.