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, 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