Ways of Seeing Trees | Audio Description
Creative Access Notes for a Film Poem by Naomi Foyle, Wendy Pye and Razia Aziz
The three sound files are followed by the texts.
Audio Description Intro Notes (focusing on visual description)
Sensory Introduction (with multisensory description)
End Notes and Credits
Audio Description Intro Notes (focus on visual description)
In this film poem, images of trees – seen up close or from a distance, superimposed with graphic shadows or seeping from colour into black and white – flow by as in a dream. At the start of the film a cloudy screen resolves into a greyscale image of an oak tree in a field, its bare branches resembling the bronchial airways in the lobes of a lung. Then, framed by the animation of an opening oval, a catkin dangles from a twig and the sun shines through dark green leaves until the poem speaks of grief and the aperture closes. This film is a portal to the imagination, and as it continues, I invite you to explore your own inner visions of trees.
Sensory Introduction (multisensory description)
As you listen to the Hindustani raag bhairav, you might enter a lightly meditative state, raise your face to sun beams streaming through a forest canopy, warming your skin until the leaves shiver and a cool wind caresses your cheeks. As the poem and music continue, you might imagine moving through a woodland, the trees reaching out as your guides. As you hear the word burl, you might trail your hand over the rough bulging growth on the trunk of an old tree, sensing the pulse of life, as if a child is growing within. And when enchantment enters the poem, you might breathe in the scent of moss, then float up through the branches of a sycamore to the sky.
End Notes and Credits
The film ends with a photograph of poet and art critic John Berger, whose influential book and TV series Ways of Seeing exposed the political context of European art. Living in a time of climate crisis, we cannot afford to take trees for granted. However you experience this film poem, I hope it helps deepen your ways of seeing trees.
Poem by Naomi Foyle
Film by Wendy Pye
Read by Naomi Foyle
Music composed by: Razia Aziz
Harmonium, Hang Drum and Vocals performed by Razia Aziz
John Berger is quoted from ‘Words II’ in Collected Poems (Smokestack Books, 2014)
‘Ways of Seeing Trees’ is published in Salt & Snow (Waterloo Press, 2025)
The photograph of John Berger is by Jean Mohr.
With special thanks to:
Joris Coiffard: Audio Technician
Darren Mapletoft: Poem Recording Supervisor
Razia Aziz: Music Recording
Simon Yapp: Sound Engineer
Prof Hannah Thompson: Audio Description Consultant
Waterloo Press
Luna Arts
Subtown Studios
