Rivers were the arteries of our first civilizations - the Tigris and Euphrates of Mesopotamia, India's Ganges, Egypt's Nile, the Yellow River of China - and have nourished modern cities from London to New York, so it is natural that poets have for centuries drawn essential meanings and metaphors from their endless currents.

English poets from Shakespeare and Dryden, Wordsworth and Byron to Ted Hughes, John Betjeman and Alice Oswald; Irish poets - Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, to name but a few; Scottish and Welsh poets from Henry Vaughan and Robert Louis Stevenson to Robin Robertson and Gillian Clarke. A whole raft of American poets from Whitman, Emerson and Emily Dickinson to Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver, Natasha Trethewey and Grace Paley. Folk songs. African-American spirituals. Poems from ancient Egypt and Rome. From medieval China and Japan. And a truly international selection of modern poets from Europe (France, Italy, Russia, Serbia), India, Africa, Australia and South and Central America, all combining in celebration of the rivers of the world. From the Mississippi to the Limpopo. From the Dart to the Danube.

Plunge in.

About the Author
Henry Hughes is a poet, essayist and professor of English at Western Oregon University. He has previously edited The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing and Fishing Stories for Everyman's Library. Alice Oswald lives in Devon and is married with three children. Her collections include Dart, which won the 2002 T.S. Eliot Prize, Woods etc. (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), A Sleepwalk on the Severn (Hawthornden Prize), Weeds and Wildflowers (Ted Hughes Award), Memorial (Warwick Prize for Writing), and Falling Awake, which won the 2016 Costa Poetry Award and the Griffin Prize for Poetry. She was elected as the Oxford University Professor of Poetry in 2019. Langston Hughes (1901-1967) was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the most influential and acclaimed American writers of the twentieth century. A renowned poet from a young age, Hughes' first collection of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published when he was just 24. He would go on to publish more than thirty-five books, including his award-winning debut novel, Not Without Laughter, and the short story collection, The Ways of White Folks. His widely-read journalism and nonfiction became important documents in the support and promotion of the civil rights movement.


Book Information
ISBN 9781841598277
Author Various
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Everyman's Library
Publisher Everyman
Weight(grams) 233g
Dimensions(mm) 165mm * 111mm * 20mm