the sea refuses no river

The journey of grief is a strange one

and one not often talked about in our everyday reality of this society,

but I know what it's like to dive deep,

down to the bottom of the wreck,

feel the ribs of the wreck,

after losing a parent so young in life

In this collection, the sea refuses no river, there is an acceptance of the pain and an acceptance of the healing moments; the healing journeys. To quote Adrienne Rich: I came to explore the wreck', and in this collection, Bethany discovers how, 'The words are purposes. The words are maps.'

"Bethany Rivers is unusual in contemporary British poetry because she has evolved a discursive mode which allows her to speak explicitly about emotions and (even more unusually) ideas. That is a sign of her powerful personal investment in what she writes and her determination to make poetry speak about important questions – she refuses to write easy conventional poems. These qualities, combined with her ransacking of the everyday for signs of the archetypal, single her out as a poet who deserves to be widely read and thought about." - Ian Gregson

"There is something of the startled deer in the vulnerable poignancy of these poems. The poems are carefully held in check from being too raw by the references to nature: 'the quiet hills'/ 'a pigeon on a sunlit gate'. This finely exercised restraint lends to these poems a great delicacy and beauty. A fine collection." - Gill McEvoy