between heart and sap
dan’s debut poetry collection comes as a heartfelt celebration of—and eulogy for—the trees in our life. Cole fluently interweaves quiet contemplations with urgently disjointed rhythms, combining emphatic fervor with a profound love for the world around them. Drawing on their background as a dancer, writer, creative arts therapist, and tree caretaker, dan reminds us of the delicate bodies and ecosystems upon which we all depend.
Available for purchase through Nothing to Say Press. Includes an audiobook component made in collaboration with Christian Tan-Lin Li featuring live field recordings. Cover painting by Paula Walters Parker.
“Before I learned that Dani Cole was a writer, I knew of their work in dance and improvisation. between heart and sap speaks the language of a body continuous with other beings of Earth, not one claiming dominion. As suggested in their poem, “untitled,” Cole allows the sensibilities of bodies to reimagine, reshuffle, and ultimately transform the way we read and understand. There’s a deliberate, surreal choppiness to this poetry’s sound and sense, an anti-rhythm keeping Cole’s readers alert, on edge, unable to settle into any comfortable roll. These roughly cut poems sport textures of bark and bumps of bone beneath skin, not the flat smoothness of elegant marks on paper. Their lines are puzzle pieces firmly brushing your hand aside as they gather themselves according to their own lights.”
“At times fluid like sap, at times hard etched like bark, Dani Cole’s words paint a world where the bodies of trees and humans and other beings are interchangeable, mutable, and sentient— a world where the movements of humans and trees are the profound & silent choreographies of life’s geological processes. These are poems that slowly teach us to read them. In doing so, they reveal our current lives as an aftermath that veers between pain and softness and redemption in search of a profound and indelible connection to the natural world.”