poetry

No Man’s Land is the highly assured debut collection of poems by Chile-based Irish poet David Nash, an exploration and a reclamation of a place at once familiar and strange – the rural landscape of the poet’s formative years. 

Returning for the first time in more than a decade, Nash re-immerses himself in a world of memory and language, folklore and custom, revealing a strikingly intimate connection with flora and fauna, land- and seascape. 

Yet all the while his presence feels questioned, undeserved, his calling as both participant and observer under assault from the passage of time and the overwhelming threat of the present ecological moment.

Inventive and playful, surprising and life-affirming, at its heart No Man’s Land is nevertheless a book about loss ­– the loss of language, knowledge, nature and wilderness that affects all of us in these challenging and troubling times.


An auspicious and powerful debut – exuberant, original, comforting.

— Paula Meehan


Published by The Dedalus Press HERE

"Using a variety of experimental approaches and with a singular originality, David Nash constructs a compelling debut publication that grows in power through each section.


Place, the naming of place and the author’s relationship with it, the natural world, addresses to loved ones and a consideration of the self, all are seamlessly braided together, occasionally seasoned by an awareness of broader culture and more demotic notes. The undercurrent throughout is queer love, presented here with original flair, the eroticism often surfacing from surprising angles.


The narrative arc develops and grows in intensity, culminating in a final section powerfully focused on mortality and presented in prose form. It is as if the poetry itself has broken into islands, an effect lightly presaged in the prologue which is a slender poem with barely any lines or words.



Nash doesn’t merely inhabit the islands of Chile; they inhabit him. This pamphlet is more than ‘promising’, conveying the accomplishment of a first book. More please."

-Eva Salzman


Published by 14poems, available here


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