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.'
Praise for ‘the sea refuses no river’
“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
“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, Professor at Bangor University
About the Author
Bethany Rivers' debut pamphlet, Off the wall, was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing. She is the author of `Fountain of Creativity: ways to nourish your writing' from Victorina Press. Her biggest passions in life are writing and enabling others to write. She has been widely published in magazines, anthologies and online in the UK and USA, including: Envoi, Cinnamon Press, Bare Fiction, Fair Acre Press, Verve Poetry Press, Yorkshire Valley Press, Silver Birch Press, The Lampeter Review, The Lake, Blithe Spirit, High Window Literary Journal, Laldy Scottish Literary Journal, Writers' Cafe, Riggwelter, I am not a silent poet, Picaroon Poetry, Three Drops from a Cauldron, The Ofi Press. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Cardiff University and has taught creative writing for over 13 years. She also mentors writers individually, through the writing of their novels, short stories, children's fiction, memoirs, and poetry: www.writingyourvoice.org.uk Bethany Rivers is also editor of the online poetry magazine, As Above So Below, which publishes poetry on the theme of spirituality and transcendence.