The Islands of Chile

by David Nash

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

Published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And then there’s this thing about light: that it’s an island, / it’s a place, an event, you can swim to it, it’s something you attend. / It’s a word that hasn’t been used yet in a lie.” David Nash’s The Islands of Chile, the third poetry pamphlet from fourteen poems, offers up such a gorgeous set of luminous, searching poems. Here language and identity dance on shifting, living land, and the act of becoming is ripped open, laid bare. “Only in the rear-view mirror does your form shift, / like mine does.” “I gave over to the process / and its Greek-strange vocabulary, and saw my own language to be at a loss.” “To catalyse life. To retard it. / Not to love or accept love. / To rebuff language. To speak anyway.” “To become what becomes of you.” There’s ‘Tierra del Fuego’, a brilliant trio of short poems, ‘Isla Falsa’ and ‘Isla Luz’, the collection’s knockouts, the punchy two-line ‘Isla Olvidada’, and ‘Isla Peligrosa’, which begins “I am pure form.” Much of Nash’s work feels so visionary, finding truth in the chaos of the world: “The worst thing in the world is restless land”, is one type of revelation; “to be touched / is to be proven” is another. In ‘Isla Huerta’, I enjoyed the wry biblical inversion of “He looked on what he had done, and it was no good”; and lastly, ‘Isla del Muerto’, a fraught and formally fascinating final long poem.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection was completely amazing I can't wait to buy myself a copy and underline all my favourite lines

[Massi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Thank you