the sea refuses no river

The journey of grief is a strange one and one not often talked about 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