Standing Wood

This is an extract from a memoir, provisionally entitled “Hoarding: a how to guide”, each chapter of which focusses on an object. “Standing Wood” explores the idea of more-than-human narrative through the relationships between the character of the Wood Cutter and the firewood he chopped and burnt. The piece explores the idea of giving voice to standing wood – long-dead trees, dead but still burnable. It narrates the movement of humans (as well as ice and seeds) across continents. Various types of timber are animated – bog oak and abandoned fish crates from the peats of Scotland, mallee root from the arid country of the Riverland – to explore the boundaries between subjectivity and objecthood. Standing wood is not just a metaphor for human characters in the piece, but is also metonymic and literal. It uses creative non-fiction to try to map some practices, relationship and stories that weave together and co-constitute these humans and the firewood that warms, comforts, shames and defines them.