Soil and forest management is something civilations in Anatolia have had to contend with, with varying success, for millenia. With the recent release of Cherie Hunter Day's e-chapbook The Rattle Inside, Half Day Moon Press has arranged for more saplings to be planted in the region. This is a new-leafed tradition going back to the very first Half Day Moon Press title Palmenhaus: A Visitor's Guide; and as of now, a whole grove's worth will have been planted in various forests: 6 in Sivas Karşıyaka Memorial Forest; 6 in the Uzunbağ Memorial Forest in Divriği (which is also in the province of Sivas); and 3 in the southern province of Antalya . . . . The saplings are planted by arrangement with the NGO TEMA (The Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion). Planting saplings is a tradition Half Day Moon Press intends to continue for each subsequent e-chapbook release. In addition, the press will no longer offer print-friendly versions of chapbooks beginning with No. 7 (which will showcase yet another intriguing Californian poet, and will be made available before midsummer).
Finally, I'd like to end with a passage from Strabo (Στράβων 64 or 63 BC – c. AD 24) on how Anatolia's forests in antiquity provided the backdrop of local myths, followed by my commentary on it in verse. The Strabo passage is my own version based on both translations and the original Greek. Both the passage and my subsequent poem were included in a visual-textual sequence called "A Forester's Guide to Aegean Trees" first published in Otoliths issue 56 in 2020:
Along the same coast, set just above the sea, is Ortygia, a luxuriant grove with a great variety of trees, but mostly the cypress. And flowing through it is the River Cenchrus, where Leto is said to have bathed after her ordeal . . . And close by [is] the olive tree where the goddess is said to have first laid down to rest . . . .
-----Strabo 14.1.20
thousand
year old
olive's
spring
shade
