Praise for The Other Tree

Reading Alison Lubar’s The Other Tree is like looking through a family album and watching the people come to life, start talking, and—in listening, closely and carefully, to each other, and in light of Lubar’s exquisite attention—keep growing. These poems reanimate the past, recover what has been lost, and redeem what has been broken; they are the finding and the freeing of oneself in the roots and the shade of the “ancestral sanctuary of uncollected leaves.”

- Brandon Shimoda, author of The Afterlife Is Letting Go

The Other Tree blooms from an ancestral place of wild strawberries. I’m in awe of Lubar’s fearlessness and tenderness; each poem in this magnificent collection is infused with the sensory fullness that our memories deserve. At once inquisitive and cutting, The Other Tree summons the voices of strong aunties, traumatized uncles, and other family members who survived confinement to live on as ghosts. Here is a poet who leans into the haunting, transmutes rage, reclaims power. This book reminds me that history is a branching thing, its vines and tributaries anchoring us to a past both painful and triumphant.  

- Brynn Saito, author of Under a Future Sky

In The Other Tree, Alison Lubar is “both immersed conservator and distant witness,” although their act of witness feels as near, as lived-in, as only a poet of their caliber can achieve. By “re-enter[ing] the narrative,” they weave together painful familial histories and their present-day ramifications: from their Auntie E refusing baptism in the internment camp to bringing their Ojisan to their school’s pancake breakfast. In this searing collection, time collapses; wounds become sites of strength; and we learn that acts of rebellion are our inheritances too. The Other Tree is a dauntless testament to memory, to survival, to living in spite of it all.

—Mandy Moe Pwint Tu, author of Fablemaker

Photo credit: Jay Shifman

Alison Lubar teaches high school English by day and yoga by night. They are a queer, nonbinary, mixed-race femme whose life work has evolved into bringing mindfulness practices to young people. Their work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart & Best of the Net, and they’re the author of four chapbooks: Philosophers Know Nothing About Love (Thirty West Publishing House, 2022), queer feast (Bottlecap Press, 2022), sweet euphemism (CLASH!, 2023), and It Skips a Generation (Stanchion, 2023). Their first full-length poetry collection, METAMOURPHOSIS, was published with fifth wheel press in October 2024. Find out more at http://www.alisonlubar.com/ or on Twitter @theoriginalison.