In 1968 Nancy Holt travelled to Dartmoor National Park, a rural area in Southwest England. On this trip she executed the first of four Buried Poems (1969–71), which was dedicated to Robert Smithson.

In 2004 she described the Buried Poems as “private artworks.  A concrete poem, made for a particular person, was buried in the earth in such places as an unnamed, uninhabited island in the Florida Keys, Arches National Park in the Utah desert and the bottom of the Highlands of Navesink near Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Certain physical, spatial and atmospheric qualities of a site would evoke a person who I knew. I would then read about the history, geology, flora and fauna of the site and select certain passages from my readings for inclusion in a booklet, which also contained maps, photos, very detailed directions for finding the “Buried Poem”, along with either postcards, cut out images, and/or specimens of leaves and rocks.”

Wistman’s Wood brings together several close-up photographs that depict the textures and details of trees, ferns and stones in the natural environment on the exact site of the first Buried Poem.