Reviewed by Kathryn MacDonald
In A Nomenclature for Light, Josie Di Sciasio-Andrews’ eighth collection of poetry, she continues her exploration of the world around her. Di Sciasio-Andrews noted in a 2021 interview, that her poems are written, collected thematically, and then arranged carefully into a manuscript. Reading A Nomenclature for Light, one can see how this process continues. In this collection of individual poems, Di Sciasio-Andrews stands at the centre of each poem, observing the world around her. She opens a doorway into her thoughts and life experiences and invites us inside.
Perhaps a clue to the decision to place the poems one-after-the-other lies in the “nomenclature” of the title. As a system of naming, Di Sciascio-Andrews allows each poem’s title and verse to address the light. The continuous structure of the collection – all 101 pages of poems – runs unbroken from start to finish; and so “light” is the perfect underlying word to link the poems together in a coherent whole.
The first poem, the doorway into the collection, is also the doorway into Di Sciascio-Andrews’ process and an introduction to the themes running through A Nomenclature for Light. Because it is foundational, it is worth taking a moment to read the entire poem:
THE EARTH LAUGHS IN FLOWERS Sometimes, the poem arrives Like a love song on a summer morning. Soft notes caught in mid-air. Tuned to the inward hum Of its rhythmic cadence, We lean into the light No wiser than the daffodils. With the same naive eagerness Of crocuses, we extricate ourselves Out of the darkness to be born. Blinded and bruised, innocent. We are such foolhardy neophytes, The poets and the flowers. Rushing head over heels Into the sun. Our bodies, pages Upon which the light will unfold The secrets of everything it holds. Like children stuffing pocketfuls Of treasure in our hearts, we offer Our measly gifts of words for love Or grace returned, while time withers Us, and the world too, takes all that it can. The ordinary moments of each day are captured and celebrated in settings of nature and home. Di Sciascio-Andrews draws inspiration from people, things, memory, and emotion – the stuff of lyric poetry. For example, in “Pink Daiquiris” (38-39), the poem begins: “You picked me up that morning, / Forty years ago, to take me to Niagara Falls // In your second-hand red Fiat, / I remember…” and a narrative thread weaves a story through to the final line, “Our joy fleeting, shimmering.”
This sense of joy, mixed with nostalgia, continues in one of my favourite poems in the collection, “Spring Blossoms” (81), which is also one of the shortest poems:
SPRING BLOSSOMS Pale petals fall From the apple branch Fly off into the air White moths. Di Sciascio-Andrews’ light, evocative touch lifts images into metaphorical flight, as it also does in “Paradise” (80): “… my heart / A new sparrow in spring grass.”Scattered through A Nomenclature for Light, are poems of the immigrant experience. Di Sciascio-Andrews’ writing on this theme is haunting in its authenticity of emotion, the longing not quite lament:
NIGHT OF MIRACLES
In the commotion of departure,
We were distracted looking out at sea
When our ship silently unhinged
From port and by the time we turned
Around, the city was floating away,
Receding with its shrinking outline
[…]
We felt the whole weight of something
Suddenly dislocate our hearts then
As if standing on a precipice.
That sudden emptiness in the gut
You get when you’re about to fall,
The hollow ache of loss.
Turn around! Look! My father said,
That’s Italy receding.
And we watched the blue Tyrrhenian
Swallow Naples and the Italian coast,
Then turned our gaze to the horizon’s
Shimmering, undulating light
To invisible cities beyond the Atlantic:
Canada, our future home across the world.
The poems in A Nomenclature For Light reach for the light, illuminate memory and daily experience, and celebrate nature from flowers to silt. These warm, accessible poems sing songs of joy.
Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S., and other countries. Her new poetry collection, The Blue Gate is forthcoming Spring 2026 with Frontenac House. Wayside, a chapbook, is forthcoming Winter 2026 with Big Pond Rumours Press. Liminal Spaces is a chapbook anthology of ekphrastic poetry by Kathryn and three fellow-poets (2025). She is the author of Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (poetry chapbook, 2024), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems (2011) and Calla & Édourd (novel, 2009).
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