The Poems

RITA DOVE

Everybody who’s anybody longs to be a tree –
or ride one, hair blown to froth.
That’s why horses were invented, and saddles
tooled with singular stars.

From: “Horse and Tree,” Collected Poems 1974–2004 (W.W. Norton & Co.) © 2016 by Rita Dove

ROSS GAY

...in my body
is a tree slouched in prayer
by its burden of butterflies,

reminds me
I am one of the butterflies...

From Be Holding

JOY HARJO

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset—
What shall I do with all this heartache?
The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
To the edge of the river of life, and drink.

Excerpted from “Speaking Tree.” Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo, from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

Cada vez
que se cae un árbol
se cae una estrella—
levántala, levántalo

Each time
a tree falls
a star falls—
lift it up, lift it

“Cada vez,” written especially for the Kennedy Center’s REACH to FOREST festival and inspired by the words of Chan K’in, the To’ohil [elder] of Naja, Chiapas, Mexico, © 2023 by Juan Felipe Herrera

ANEESHWAR KUNCHALA

Don’t cut down trees
They’re home for wrens, robins, and woodpeckers
They’re all our friends
We must all stand together and share information
So please don’t give up on conservation

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

The trees promise to remember us.
Yes. It is the only word a tree knows. . .

What better blessing than to move without hurry
under trees?

From “The Only Word a Tree Knows,” Hugging the Jukebox; and “Last August Hours before the Year 2000,” You & Yours

JACQUELINE SUSKIN

How we disregard the sycamore, the oak, the elm and the maple,
is synonymous with the way we forget each other.
Remember, there is no nature without you.

From “There is No Nature Without You”

The Poets

Rita Dove

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. A 1970 Presidential Scholar, she attended Miami University of Ohio, Universität Tübingen in Germany, and the University of Iowa, where she earned her creative writing MFA in 1977. In 1987, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her third collection of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, and from 1993 to 1995, she served as U.S. Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress. Dove is a recipient of the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

Ross Gay

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.

Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee Nation, is the author of ten books of poetry, several plays, children's books, two memoirs, and seven music albums. Her honors include Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.

Juan Felipe Herrera

Son of farm workers, Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate of the United States (2015–2016) and is the first Latino to hold the position. From 2012–2014, Herrera served as California State Poet Laureate. Herrera’s many collections of poetry include Every Day We Get More Illegal, Notes on the Assemblage, Senegal Taxi, Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971–2007, and Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse, which received the Americas Award. Herrera is a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and National Book Critics Circle Award. His books of prose for children include: SkateFate; Calling The Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical for young audiences in New York City; and Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. Recent Lifetime Achievement awards include the Ruth Lilly Award and the Robert Frost Medal. Herrera is a graduate of UCLA, Stanford and Writer’s Workshop, University of Iowa.

Aneeshwar Kunchala

Aneeshwar Kunchala is a 9-year-old conservationist who uses his art to inspire and spread his important message about conservation to young people and adults around the world. He started this remarkable journey after seeing a picture of a dead whale on the beach with its stomach filled with plastic. This incident made him do something for the natural world, because the water sources are littered, the soil and air is polluted, and it’s impacting all the creatures. The animals are losing their home and some of the species are close to extinction due to deforestation and poaching.

Aneeshwar is determined to do his part for the natural world by raising awareness with his poems, paintings, and documentaries. At 7 years old, he had an incredible opportunity to present a documentary for the United Nations produced by Sky Kids, “COP27—6 Ways to Save Our Planet,” where children from six continents talked about the solutions to save the world. Aneeshwar has become the Youngest Documentary Presenter (male), recognized by Guinness World Records. Aneeshwar also presented the “Save Our Wildlife” documentary to demonstrate how climate change is impacting wildlife. He is fortunate to have amazing opportunities to take his voice around the globe using world stages like Britain’s Got Talent and America’s Got Talent and many business forums around the world.

Aneeshwar loves spending time outdoors watching birds. He believes that every animal has its own special superpower. He is a conservation and wildlife campaigning phenomenon. He has already won multiple national and international awards for his work building awareness and inspiring millions of people to protect the planet and its living things.

He is a Young Scientific Explorer, Climate Change Voice of the Year 2023, a Global Child Prodigy award recipient, a BBC Blue Peter gold badge holder, a British Youth Citizen award recipient, he was named a Young Climate Change Leader by the UK’s Prime Minister, a British Future role model, and ISPA Award Recipient—2024 Celebrating Our Planet Award Recipient. In 2023 he was appointed the Kennedy Center’s first Youth Ambassador for the Arts and Environment. These achievements have helped him to reach out to more people and inspire young children to explore the natural world and try and help it by making small meaningful changes.

Aneeshwar’s message—“Please save the animals and make sure the world looks beautiful.”

Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye was the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate from 2019–2022.

Jacqueline Suskin

Jacqueline Suskin is a Turnaround Artist, performance poet, and educator who has composed over 40,000 improvisational poems with her ongoing writing project, Poem Store. She is the author of eight books, including Help in the Dark Season, Every Day is a Poem, and A Year in Practice, with work featured in various publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times. Suskin lives in Detroit, where she works as a teaching artist with InsideOut Literary Arts, bringing nature poetry into classrooms with her Poem Forest curriculum.