Poe(trees) of Place: Forest Poetics in Lithuania and Tasmania

Analysing the poetic ecology of the forest as a cultural landscape offers insight into ecocritical consciousness. This article compares Lithuanian national and Tasmanian colonial poetics, and examines post-colonial poetry linked to the Tasmanian conservation movement. Starting in nineteenth century Lithuania under Russian rule, this article examines The Forest of Anykščiai by Antanas Baranauskas in English translation. The poem, a national anthem to a cleared forest, reconstructs an entire ecosystem and imbues it with Lithuanian mythology. In this way, the poem re-inscribes Lithuanian forests as nationally significant, and inextricably linked to culture, sense of place and the struggle against Russian colonisation and imperialism. Nature becomes a nationally unifying symbol and forests in particular are represented as cultural landscapes. In far away Tasmania, the island state of Australia, a violent colonial past has also been unfolded in the setting of extensive forests. In nineteenth century Tasmania, however, the forest poetics were written b