Trees, Science, and Materiality:

The Diffractive Poetics of Eva Ström

Abstract

Eva Ström’s poetry frequently includes references to trees, which is especially clear in two of her most recent poetry collections: Utskuret ur ett större träd (2013) and Jag såg ett träd (2022), both of which feature the word tree (träd in Swedish) in their titles. Through a material-ecocritical reading, this article examines how, especially through recourse to trees, Ström’s poetry negotiates the boundaries between humans, nature, materiality, and aesthetics.

Ström’s poetry collections share certain features, such as the preoccupation with trees and contemporaneous news, especially concerning disasters, extreme weather, and horrors. Taken together, they also focus on the sculptural, art history, and religious rituals. The latter collection details the Covid-19 pandemic, whereas the former of course does not have this focus. The pandemic foregrounds interconnectivity and the difficulty of maintaining a separation between the human body and the environment, something which posthuman materialist criticism has long recognized. In addition, the emphasis on deep time brought on by the invocation of dendrology emplaces the human in a larger, geological time frame. However, similar concerns likewise emerge in the previous collection. The question of where a human begins or ends is asked, which reverberates with the later collection’s preoccupation with porosity, interconnectivity, and enmeshment. With its blurring of foreground and background, Ström’s poetry emerges as one of diffraction, reading events and occurrences through one another. With its emphasis on trees, sculptures, art, and religious rituals, her poetry foregrounds material and posthuman concerns, but these are always paired with—troubled by just as they themselves in turn trouble—older, humanistic understandings of what it means to be human.