books
River's first full-length poetry collection, Leap was launched at Sheffield's 'Off The Shelf' Festival of Writing & Reading in 2010. Buy it here!
You Are Here: Travels of a Derbyshire Poet Laureate (Derbyshire County Council 2009) is available from any Derbyshire library, from Ali Betteridge or directly from River. Aimed at demystifying poetry for a general audience, You Are Here contains poems commissioned during River's laureateship as well as her responses to frequently asked questions such as ‘Why don't poems rhyme any more?’ and ‘Is there anything a poet shouldn't write about?’
“Her poems are accessible, create wonderful images and are a pleasure to hear. The stories bring the poems alive and make them personal.”
- Hayfield Poetry Group
The Purpose of Your Visit (Smith/Doorstop 2008) was highly commended in the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition.
“(Her) gift to us throughout this pamphlet is to allow us to better understand the personal challenges of sadness, conflict and even fear, by considering the global urgencies of war, poverty and violence.”
- Rosie Shepperd, Magma 44
“Well-chosen details stamp the poems with authenticity and, in a consistently contemporary idiom, she maintains a tone which is wry, questioning, empathic and serious.”
- Dilys Wood, Artemis Poetry
“...the real achievement is the voice. There is no explication of opinion here, no sermonising, just brutally honest observation. This is conflict restrained by the poetic form and rendered all the more frightening for it.”
- Jane Bluett, Assent (formerly Poetry Nottingham)
Non-fiction
'Critic Tango' and 'Bursting Free: Writing and M.E.' in Writing Works: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities (ed. Bolton, Field and Thompson, Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2006).
'Death and Poetry' in Dying, Bereavement and the Healing Arts (ed. Bolton, JKP 2007).
'Notes for the Guidance of Accused Persons' in Faslane 365 - A Year of Anti-Nuclear Blockades (ed. Angie Zelter, Luath Press 2008.
