A Reflection on —An ode to tree-writing 树木写作颂

—Emma Thomson

From July until November 2023, poet, writer, literary scholar, translator and editor Ouyang Yu and multi-disciplinary visual artist Jessye Wdowin-McGregor worked together to capture a short film exploring Ouyang’s ‘tree-writing project’ - a poetic representation of his daily practice of writing poems on the trunks and leaves of trees in Bundoora Park, Kingsbury, a site of inspiration the poet has returned to again and again for almost thirty years.

The film, a ‘video poem’ entitled An ode to tree-writing 树木写作颂, features Ouyang’s words and Jessye’s imagery and the sounds of Wurundjeri Country as the artists walk and talk together in the park and its surrounds.

Grounded in the artists’ wider residency project, Ekphrasis, it was conceived as a reflection upon ecology and time, the artists’ mutual love of nature, belief in the spontaneity of the creative act and the vitality of the poetic image in the search for a sense of spirit and place.

Its title takes inspiration from Ouyang’s practice and Jessye’s love of ancient Greek mythology and storytelling.

'Ode' from the ancient Greek, ᾠδή, is a “type of ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea” [1]. In ancient times, its stanza forms varied, but it was typically presented in three parts and was often set to music in the ancient Greek tradition.

It’s no surprise then that An ode to tree-writing (树木写作颂) is presented in three parts, loosely encompassing the residency project’s stages and areas of shared thematic interest, namely:
—Ephemerality/permanence – Entanglements with the natural world
—Found or self-found poetry & spontaneous forms of urban nature
—Body & self-translation ‘into’ place – Elemental infrastructures and materials that shape our surroundings & sense of place.

In the video poem, moments of spoken narrative and poetry written and spoken (in Chinese and English) intersect with fragments of sonic and visual reflection as the flora and fauna of the environment steps forward to be heard and seen.

Ouyang begins.

It’s all about spontaneity, the natural things, themselves. And also the fact that it's not premeditated. It happens in situ as you come to the tree, the ideas come to you, the words come to you, and you put them down, regardless of whether they are perfect or not. I'm not even striving for perfection.'

As the video poem continues, poetic texts emerge, written on the trees or leaves of trees in the park. Sometimes, they are new creations; other times, they are remnants, traces found or, as Ouyang would say, ‘self-found’ discoveries of historical poems he has written.

Jessye’s visual poetry also emerges. Her unique style of layering materials or elements of the landscape constantly shifts the viewer’s perspectival engagement, encouraging an appreciation of intimate details, patterns of interconnectedness and poetry - in leaf forms, the bark striations of the trees, the spiralled form of a spider’s web.

It’s a quality that underpins the sense of intimacy felt in the work – that conveys the immense complexity of the natural surroundings and our relationship to/with them while maintaining a sense of spontaneity in the capture that is in keeping with Ouyang’s creative impulse and style of working.

Alongside poems by Ouyang, remnants of beloved poems by the ancient Chinese master poets occasionally emerge – such as 《静夜思》'Quiet Night Thought’ by Li Bai 李白 (701–762 AD), providing space for reflection - on the moon, childhood and the cultural tradition of learning poetry in China at school.

It's part of Ouyang's longstanding rumination on nostalgia through the evocative force of the moon, grounded in his deep love of ancient Chinese poetic practice. It’s also a way of self-translating cultural heritage, tradition and experience into this place, a site of contemporary creative inspiration as much as it is a place for thinking about spirit, tradition, self-identity and belonging.

As the film continues, the forms of the trees and leaves provide a unique canvas for writing. They encourage the poet to experiment with the placement of words and characters, an innovation Ouyang calls ‘directional writing’.

Sometimes, the trees resist. Difficulties writing on the bark of a particular tree creates a moment of levity: ‘The tree has a strong resistance to anything human or of anyone wanting to capture it!’.

The statement injects classic Ouyang humour, effortlessly bringing into the narrative the intersection of the human and 'more-than-human' presences. It's part of a deep concern for ecology that both artists share, made visible also through the presence of Jessye's hand in the work, a motif that has frequently appeared in her work over the years.

Akin to Ouyang’s tree-writing, it’s a performative gesture that places the self into the landscape. The hand, abstracted from the body, outstretched, expresses a sense of gentle rapprochement. There is also an inherent sense of movement and transformation.

Like much of the plant matter in the film, the skeletal leaves in Jessye's hand - once green and full of life - flutter gently in the breeze, ready to take flight with the birds that sing in the background, conveying a wider sense of movement and, with it, time passing. 

In the second part of the film, Ouyang shares an anecdote, and this shifts the narrative further into this theme of transformation/self-transformation and the wider examination of spirit and place:

‘Because I lived through the Cultural Revolution and sometimes in my walks outside or at home, music of these days come. This [music notations are written on the tree using a numbered reference system] happens to be one of the songs and I can even remember the words and lyrics. And you can actually sing it…. [Ouyang begins to sing]. It is devoted to Chairman Mao… To outsiders, they might find this totally alien or absurd. But to us, having lived through those days, these things catch you unawares. You’re not prepared. You walk through the Australian landscape, something 30, 40 50 years ago came back, haunting you, just for a fleeting moment. Totally unexpected. It’s not as if you’re trying to record. If you do, you cannot remember. It’s just something that comes from no-where’. 

Beginning with the magpie song, the vignettes crafted hereafter by Jessye create space for reflection, for thinking about movement, time and place. Close-ups of the grasslands, delicately coloured by nature, blow gently in the breeze while the chorus of bird song continues in the background.

The camera moves to look up the hill that looks like a horizon line. Above it, storm clouds gather slightly ominously. In Jessye's hand, a tiny circular mirror (the shape of the sun, moon?) reflects the clouds, the sky, and the sense of time passing, day to night, and with that, thoughts gather.

It's footage that was captured and crafted against the backdrop of the 2023 Voice Referendum, in which citizens of this country were asked to vote on whether to change the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

The first referendum of the 21st century, The Voice Referendum, as it became known, was a critical moment in Australia’s history. Ouyang wrote a poem during the campaign phase, also displayed in the exhibition, entitled ‘No to No, and Yes to Yes’.

Jessye’s imagery likewise speaks to this moment. There is a sense of transition, movement and fragility.  

A tiny bloom of flowers attaches itself to a rock in the river. It lingers there gently on the precipice of change, hoping for movement while the sound of the rushing water and dominant forces of the times marching on continue in the background. In another scene, a lone leaf, perfectly traced into the soil, a yes under that no, blows away.

The Voice Referendum does not pass.

In the final stages of the second part, there is a slight shift in mood as Ouyang's poem 'Yes way' emerges. It is about the poet's play on linguistic tradition - his perspectives on the curious lack of balance he sometimes finds in English.

'Ha, ha! I'll create a new expression. You always say 'no way', I'll say 'yes way'. That doesn't exist in English. If you say, yes way, no, no way, yes way!', he says.

The sequence reflects the playful spirit at the heart of Ouyang's innovative practice, made possible by his prodigious skills as a literary translator, capable of occupying that in-between place between Chinese and English.

And whilst literary play is undoubtedly front and foremost, one can't help but wonder at the relevancy of the 'yes way' poems that emerge in the film and the exhibition space as another reflection on the poet's attitudes surrounding the referendum outcome, perspectives on the dominant language of this place and the citizens who speak it as their mother tongue. It's a call for greater open-mindedness and balanced perspectives.

In the exhibition space, another 'Yes way' (unpacked further below) intersects with ‘No to No, and Yes to Yes’ mentioned above, and a third poem, 'o'.

All share a similar spirit.

Either way, towards the end of part two, the artists find beauty in that little shrub covered in 'yes ways', creating a shift into the final of the video poem: 'The shadows and the light coming through is beautiful', Jessye remarks. ‘Beautiful!’ responds Ouyang.

In the final part, the moving image and sounds of place step forward, the plant life, Dirabeen waters, wind and leaves blowing in the wind, bird song – elemental infrastructures and materials with diverse representations of colour, form, texture and sonic value from nature that envision Jessye’s impression of her surroundings and sense of place.

On a windy day, post 14 October, Ouyang returns to write a poem….

When you silence a voice
it becomes an invoice
demanding you to pay for an amount
owed for centuries.

Trees felled and fallen follow in the visual imagery. They are followed by another poem, also part of the final exhibition, entitled, ‘The heart when silenced’ /《当心沉默著时 》.

It’s a reworking of a historical poem by Ouyang entitled ‘Silenced’, first written in 1995 and later incorporated into his first novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle (2002), and his more recent poetry collection, Terminally Poetic (2020).

It's what Ouyang calls a 'self-found poem'. Crafted from his earlier poem, re-written and re-created here on a tree, it's an experiment that goes to the heart of the poet's capacity for deep self-reflection and self-translation/transformation through the creative act.

His next poem featured in the video, ‘o’, is another experimentation with the aforementioned ‘directional writing’ where the poet uses the form of the tree trunk to guide his poetic musings…Lines of ‘OOOOOO’ repeat …

Barely within reach, the 'os' vary in size and shape, making the viewer think about the act of repetition, the shape of words, the shape of poetry, and perhaps, by extension, even the idea of history repeating and the role of words that shape our perspectives.

It's an in-situ writing experience that inspired his large-scale poem 'Yes Way', reworked again and exhibited in the exhibition space.

‘Yes way’ starts writ large, then diminishes in size, almost down to nothingness, before a single space and then returning to its original size. In the poem, repetition and shifting scale work together to convey a sense of movement, perhaps music even. But also more than this…

When the size of the words diminishes to almost nothingness, it’s as though nothingness – brought explicitly to life in that gap – could encompass a rupture, a ‘no way’, returning at least this viewer, to the Voice Referendum.

Whatever the viewer’s interpretation, the video poem moves gently on, and Ouyang introduces another experiment in creative expression with his poem ‘Longcomings’, he says:

 ‘What I did just know is that I created another expression in English that doesn’t exist in English... Actually, you have balanced words in English, you have ‘merits’ and ‘demerits’, but you have ‘shortcomings’, and you don’t have ‘longcomings’. But in Chinese, we have 'shortcomings', and we also have 'longcomings'. So, it’s very balanced... I mean, you have day, you have night, you have so many things that are balanced up. Why then, when it comes to shortcomings, you don’t have a longcomings. Now the answer is in another language, in Chinese language, that’s balanced up because we have longcomings… What I meant to say, is one language can learn from another by being creative’.

Again, we are returned to a consistent theme: an appreciation of language made possible through the creative act is a place for rapprochement. 

With that, the film progresses towards its final scenes with a poem and a series of vignettes filmed along the banks of the river. Standing in front of a historical poem etched into a tree, Ouyang explains: 

In Chinese, it means the breath, the breath and farness of the depths, the broadness and the farness of the depths. I think at the time, I didn’t have pens or markers on me, so I just picked up a stone, and I am going to re-write it and self-translate it.

‘I think this is one of my favourites’, says Jessye, which elicits a chuckle from Ouyang. She continues: ‘I just think with the water behind, those patterns of the shadows on the tree and then your poem’. ‘And an occasional ant!’ exclaims Ouyang. ‘Yes and an ant, yeh, I think it’s beautiful’, responds Jessye. 

And so it is. 

In the final moments, water gently passes across the screen as Jessye’s hand holds a leaf pod that flutters in the breeze. Eventually, it floats away, and the camera returns to the gentle undulations on the water’s surface, the trees on the bank (marked with Ouyang’s words) reflected on the water amidst the ever-present soundscape of bird song. 

Those birds are remarkable, diverse and ever-present from the outset of the film’s making – sometimes quiet and loitering, other times bombastic, desperate to be heard – their collective song is undoubtedly the music of this ode.  

Acknowledgement —Our project was made on the country of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. We respectfully acknowledge them as the Sovereign Custodians of the land and waters upon which we live and work. We pay our respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging. We extend this respect to all First Peoples.

An ode to tree-writing 树木写作颂

Jessye Wdowin-McGregor 'An ode to tree-writing' 《树木写作颂 》2023
single-channel video poem featuring words by Ouyang Yu
colour, sound, 27 mins 16 sec (approx).
Courtesy and copyright of the artists

This short film, a 'video poem', was made in connection with Ouyang Yu & Jessye Wdowin-McGregor / 'Ekphrasis', a residency project at correspondences from 6 September to 2 December 2023. The poems spoken and written in this video are by 欧阳昱 Ouyang Yu, except two ancient Chinese poems by the master poets 王之涣 Wang Zhihuan and 李白 Li Bai. Wang Zhihuan's poem, 《登鹳雀楼》/'White Sun', appears written on a tree. Ouyang speaks Li Bai's poem,《静夜思》/’Thoughts on a Still Night'. Note: The titles of the above poems were translated by Ouyang Yu.