peter nash
Peter Nash (1938-2024) was the author of two poetry collections, including Coyote Bush, winner of the first annual Off the Grid Poetry Prize. Nash practiced medicine for more than four decades, including after retirement, when he felt called back to working part-time in rural health clinics. He lived in Northern California on the Lost Coast, one of the longest stretches of undeveloped coastline in the continental United States.
winner of 2012
off the grid Poetry prize
“Without ever shouting, Peter Nash’s poems of rural life are deeply moving, whether as elegy or celebration.”
“Here’s a poet who has lived his life, not just imagined it. When he remembers the ‘arrowhead,’ ‘flickering tongue,’ and ‘black seeds’ of a snake’s eyes, you see them too. ”
Coyote Bush
Poems by peter nash
Coyote Bush is a book that pays homage to the earth. It is a paean to the stars and their constellations, the clouds and the wind, to the horses, cows, deer, and dogs, all who blessedly live without language. In these poems of place, Nash traces and retraces his time-worn paths into the hills of Northern California. He is content at times just to watch the light change or lie down in the hollow a pregnant doe has made in the night. But these are also poems of refuge and discovery, poems of love, of suffering, relationships, childhood memories, sudden enlightenment, sometimes back to back, sometimes rising to the surface when the reader is ready for them. Nash finds his place among the elements, firmly rooted between earth and sky.
