Kirjahaku

These poems, alert and wry, infused with perception and a generous heart, let us know we are in Claudine Nash territory. Navigating the uncertain terrain of loss and healing, Nash explores the interiors of heart and mind with the curiosity of a scientist and a poet's insistence of honoring the unknown. Parts Per Trillion brims with ghosts and gravity, sea glass and molecules, inviting us to take on a new name and a stranger's daring, to become "old-school gangsters" tossing careworn concerns off a pier. These poems take signs and portents seriously, deciding that wonder is a necessity as they ask us to break free of certainties and redefine what is plausible and possible. Giving us permission to forget what we know in the name of resilience and hope, this is language that claims the worth of each moment even when the evidence might suggest otherwise. Susan Moorhead, Author of The Night GhostThere are a trillion reasons, spoken and unspoken, to read Claudine Nash's new collection, Parts per Trillion. There is not one inert moment throughout this entire collection. Nash levitates, drifts and sinks, spins and swirls, stashes and slides. And we are with her all the way, whether we surrender to the absence of necessary words or sleep, or the presence of our individual ghosts; the quarantine of noise, silence, memory and emotion; or the discovery of heartbeats, vapors of sadness and our ability to slip between gaps and crevices into the small but well-ventilated spaces we crave and need. Nash's collection is sewn from words never spoken, and yet, she is able to gather a trillion transformed words. Climb aboard and glimpse the floating particles, neurons, atoms and an energy that can squeeze a ghost. Sherri Felt Dratfield, Author of Water Vigils and The City Claudine Nash's poems are moving microcosms in which a keen power of observation and playful imagination fuse with the minutiae of daily life to create deftly wrought lyrics. At its core, Parts per Trillion, asks metaphysical questions. From Permission Slip: "I wish to remain airborne/as long as possible. I grant myself permission to stuff my ears with wind and answer/only to my truest name." Parts per Trillion is fused with the magic of sound and the grounding temperament of science. This is a collection by an accomplished and sure poet. As Nash instructs, Please listen now, there's something I'm ready to say. Mary Lou Buschi, Author of The Spell of Coming (or Going) and Awful Baby

Winner of the 2020 Blue Light Book AwardClaudine Nash's words once again tug at the very fabric of space and time. Her poems peel back layers in such a way that the reader can simultaneously witness the molten core of the earth and the innermost depths of the narrator's soul. The body of work contained in Beginner's Guide to Loss in the Multiverse expounds upon her own constant exploration into the unknown and provides us with the roadmap to follow her there. I hope you will join her on this cosmic journey, for it is one you're not likely to forget.Claudine Nash is a psychologist and award-winning poet whose collections include the full-length books The Wild Essential (Kelsay Books: Aldrich Press, 2017) and Parts per Trillion (Kelsay Books: Aldrich Press, 2016) as well as the chapbooks Things for Which You Thirst (Weasel Press, 2020) and The Problem with Loving Ghosts (Finishing Line Press, 2014). She also edited three poetry anthologies: Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love (Transcendent Zero Press, 2019), Destigmatized (Madness Muse Press, 2017) and In So Many Words (Madness Muse Press, 2016). Her work has been nominated for the Pulitzer, Pushcart and Best of the Net Anthology Prizes and has earned numerous literary distinctions including prizes from such publications and artistic organizations as Artists Embassy International, Thirty West Publishing House, The Song Is..., and Eye on Life Magazine among others. Internationally published, her poetry has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies.

From "You Are a Mountain" to "Songbird," The Wild Essential "covers, no, seals, no, reclaims" what it means to be human, to love, to be flawed, to be alive. Claudine Nash assures us that "there is earth in you" and that we can "feel the infinite within." As she writes in the title poem: "loosen these concepts that limit and bind, touch only my truest skin." That is what her words do. They let us forget our names, the labels, the places and day we've come from. We find through her wisdom, kindness and grace how nature lives within us and what it means to feel a deeper, more beautiful rain. Julia Klatt Singer, Author of Untranslatable, A Tangled Path to Heaven and In the Dreamed of Places Claudine Nash invites her readers to return to what is natural and instinctual, and to use these lessons in trueness to live. With reflection and awareness, we find ourselves suppressing societal chatter and self-doubt; then, we see ourselves being empowered from the basis of just being our true selves. From the ozone to morning coffee, mountains to motherhood, The Wild Essential takes us to the roots of our identity so that we may flourish beyond barriers. This collection of poetry is a tender but powerful ride of self-exploration and self-acceptance through memories, experience, and forgiveness. At the end of this ride on which Claudine takes us, we acquire the tools to accept the beauty of all that makes us who we are. Mercy Tullis-Bukhari, Author of Smoke The Wild Essential is itself a continual act of healing reconnection with the authentic self. We are invited on every page into Nash's discoveries of fresh nuances of mystery and connection with the self she addresses directly in the waterside meditation "Sometimes Before It Storms" "Dear, you / give me such grief / for disappearing / into the ocean, // but tell me, // without this, // how else could / I ever offer you / any fruit?" We are reintroduced to a world that lives for itself, and in so doing allows us a mirror of our own true natures. Yet, though this speaker's paradoxical grounding in the movements between inner and natural mysteries is apparent and uncontrived, the reader is still allowed in poems like "I Keep Checking My Samsung Galaxy for Meaning" into the missteps of even the most contemplative minds - and the gleeful release of their humor. The aggregate is a deeply connected collection of poems for an often fractured world. Michael Collins, Author of Appearances and Psalmandala