Almost Islands is a memoir of Collis's friendship with and regular visits to legendary poet Phyllis Webb-now in her nineties and long enveloped in the silence which followed her last published book in 1990-as well as an extended meditation on literary ambition and failure, poetry and politics-the struggle that is writing, and the end of writing. This is a book of poetic, political, and philosophical digressions-a book that weaves numerous themes together in a non-linear fashion.