ali smith/ trees

Q: Like in many of your other books, trees play an important factor in this novel [Autumn]. There are descriptions of trees changing, people dressing up as trees and transforming into trees. What significance do trees have for you?

Ali Smith: Trees are great. Don't get me started about how clever they are, how oxygen-generous, how time-formed in inner cyclic circles, how they provide homes for myriad creatures, how back when this country was covered in forests the word for sky was an old english word that meant tops of trees ... The sweetness they create. The things they help us create. The pollenation they make possible, their utter (mellow) fruitfulness. Their gestural uprightness plus bendiness, their suppleness in all weathers. Their shelter. Their ingenuity with colours, and with looking after themselves seasonally. Their organic relation to books. Like I said, don't get me started. And of course, autumn – the fall – the lifecycle of leaf, the leaf-cycle of life. 'He who has kissed a leaf / need look no further' – William Carlos Williams. There's a Norwegian poet who everybody knows in Norway, he's like Burns is in Scotland, like Wordsworth in England, his name's Wergeland, and when he died, quite young, one of the last things he said before he went, was 'kiss next year's roses for me.' That's just the tip of what I feel about trees.

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