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riverriverbooks.bsky.social
River River Books
@riverriverbooks.bsky.social
4.1K followers 2.7K following 860 posts
Where Poetry Moves. Two editors, publishing (at least) two exceptional poetry titles a year & the Plainwater Nonfiction Series. Poetry submissions open in May. Posts by @hanvanderhart.bsky.social www.riverriverbooks.org
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River River Books @riverriverbooks.bsky.social · Sep 23
Happiest of joint publication days to FIELD NOTES by E.G. Cunningham and ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD by Jameela F. Dallis! 🎉🎉🎉

We could not be prouder of our fall titles and their authors. Congratulations, Liz and Jameela!

riverriverbooks.org/store

@egcunningham.bsky.social
Liz Cunningham holding a copy of Field Notes in a soft pastel light Jameela Dallis sitting at a desk, shelves behind her, in a pink and silver dress, Encounters propped in the foreground
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
We love to see our authors send such beautifully intelligent and good work into the world on behalf of others—fills our cup up 💙💙💙

Read @jasutherland.bsky.social’s new review of Erin C. Murphy’s Human Resources (Grayson Books, 2025) in Plume: plumepoetry.com/jennifer-a-s... #poetry #booksky
Documentary art of every kind, including poetry, is necessary. Someone needs to record what's happening. Jennifer A Sutherland reviews Erin Murphey's Human Resources in Plume Jennifer A Sutherland in the most beautiful embroidered sweater and scarf and wintry air, hair down, lifted gaze to side
November 5, 2025 at 10:25 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Read the new review of Jameela F. Dallis’s Encounters for the Living and the Dead by @christinalinsin.bsky.social in @soflopojo.bsky.social’s November issue here! 👉 www.southfloridapoetryjournal.com/reviews-2024... #poetry #booksky
"Rich and sensuous, Dallis's debut weaves together ekphrasis, clear poetic imagery, and the eternal sounding of the sea to create a portal through which reader becomes witness, and prosaic contains holy.." Christina Linsin reviews Encounters for the Living and the Dead in South Florida Poetry Journal
November 4, 2025 at 5:56 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
“Rich and sensuous, Dallis’s debut, Encounters For the Living and the Dead: poems, weaves together ekphrasis, clear poetic imagery, and the eternal sounding of the sea to create a portal through which reader becomes witness, and prosaic contains holy.”

@christinalinsin.bsky.social 💙📚🎉
Reviews 2024-25
​ SoFloPoJo Contents:     Home  * ​ Essays    *   Interviews    *  Reviews   *  ​​​ Special    *    Video   *   Visual Arts   *     Archives    *   ...
www.southfloridapoetryjournal.com
November 1, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by River River Books
blackearthinst.bsky.social
Congratulations to #BlackEarthInstitute Emeritus Fellow Lauren Camp, who was among the featured speakers at the 2025 @lityoungstown.bsky.social fall Literary Festival. Her book of #Poetry 'An Eye in Each Square,' was published by @riverriverbooks.bsky.social riverriverbooks.org/store/An-Eye...
October 29, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by River River Books
christinalinsin.bsky.social
New reviews live today in SoFloPoJo's 39th issue:
@taylorbyas.bsky.social
Resting Bitch Face

@josehernandezdz.bsky.social
The Parachutist

Jameela F. Dallis's
Encounters For the Living and the Dead
@riverriverbooks.bsky.social

and

Judith H. Montgomery's
The Ferry Keeper
November 1, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by River River Books
delicatezine.bsky.social
These are incredible collections. Ask you library to order them!
riverriverbooks.bsky.social River River Books @riverriverbooks.bsky.social · Sep 23
Happiest of joint publication days to FIELD NOTES by E.G. Cunningham and ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD by Jameela F. Dallis! 🎉🎉🎉

We could not be prouder of our fall titles and their authors. Congratulations, Liz and Jameela!

riverriverbooks.org/store

@egcunningham.bsky.social
Liz Cunningham holding a copy of Field Notes in a soft pastel light Jameela Dallis sitting at a desk, shelves behind her, in a pink and silver dress, Encounters propped in the foreground
October 24, 2025 at 8:37 PM
Reposted by River River Books
burgi.bsky.social
Hear Jameela F. Dallis read and discuss with @hanvanderhart.bsky.social on @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social
ofpoetrypodcast.com/2025/08/19/e...
Episode 77: Jameela F. Dallis (Of Oysters, Ekphrasis, and Filtering Emotion through The Beasts of the Sea)
Jameela F. Dallis, author of Encounters for the Living and the Dead (River River Books, 2025) Photo by SASSS WORLD Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere Purchase: Encounters for the Livi…
ofpoetrypodcast.com
October 22, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Reposted by River River Books
splitlipthemag.bsky.social
Want more poetry? Contributor @bettysueblue.bsky.social published a prose poem from her new book THERE IS NEWS ALONG THE OHIO RIVER (launching Feb 2026 from @riverriverbooks.bsky.social) in @pitheadchapel.bsky.social: buff.ly/DbCZShE
A photo of a brick house and tree surrounded by fog.
October 21, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by River River Books
bettysueblue.bsky.social
In better news, the blurbs coming in for There Is News Along the Ohio River, (forthcoming from @riverriverbooks.bsky.social February ‘26) are making me cry in a good way. Unlike sobbing in my car after pastry school yesterday when a teenager corrected how I was holding my knife to cut brownies FFS.
October 22, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by River River Books
burgi.bsky.social
"Last night I was oyster / whelmed and moored"
The poem Dream in Jameela F. Dallis' Encounters for the Living and the Dead, multi-layered and lusciously speaking to all senses. Another gem by @riverriverbooks.bsky.social 😍

📚💙
cover features a still life of a feast in oil on upper half: Cornelis de Heem, "Still-Life with Oysters, Lemons and Grapes" (1660s). The other half is covered by title in all caps with its first word covering the lower edge of the oil painting, on sienna-colored ground. Dream "Oysters are the answer."—M.F.K. Fisher, *Consider the Oyster* Last night I was oyster whelmed and moored in sound fed by cool Atlantic expanse gorged green, deep cupped, plump, and happy. I remember the time before when I was spat and sounds of banqueting shrimp lured me. Crackling like digital fire or hand-cut bacon a lover fries in cast iron the morning after, fearless and shirtless, humming some jaunty hymn. I knew I'd be safe—those pistoled shrimp speckled as magpie's eggs didn't burrow in waiting for me. And I didn't laugh at their cartoonish claw, something only a god or child would fashion. But did you know those asymmetric shrimp, those tiny beacons of delicious possibility, can shoot a bubble louder than thunder and hot as the surface of the sun? Well, almost as hot, but— for a night, I was oyster my ocean-worn shoulders whelmed and moored in sound fed by cool Atlantic expanse and now I am woman who dances in an emerald and schorl silk dress akin to Carolina green-gill oysters waiting for full moon.
October 22, 2025 at 10:27 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
With Lauren Camp at @lityoungstown.bsky.social, where we sold out of An Eye in Each Square! 💙📚
Han, Amorak, and Lauren camp selfie everyone smiling. Han in jacket and Lit! blue lanyard, Amorak in pink tshirt and lanyard, Lauren in red sweater and lanyard
October 18, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by River River Books
burgi.bsky.social
And while I'm at it, here's the wonderful convo with E.G. Cunningham on @hanvanderhart.bsky.social's @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social
ofpoetrypodcast.com/2025/07/28/e...
Episode 76: E.G. Cunningham (Of Field, the Suburban Exclusion of the Wild, and the Potential of Abstracts)
E.G. Cunningham, author of Field Notes (River River Books, 2025) Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere Purchase: Field Notes (River River Books, 2025) E. G. Cunningham was born in South …
ofpoetrypodcast.com
October 17, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reposted by River River Books
burgi.bsky.social
"We took notes on love, made gods of want."

From the play on the epigraph—"The text is a limited field of possible constructions" (Ricoer)—to the photos & the brilliant poems I love everything about E.G. Cunningham's FIELD NOTES 💖
@riverriverbooks.bsky.social hitting it out of the ballpark 😍

📚💙
the cover of Field Notes: a little over half features a color photograph of a wide and barren and undulating landscape in browns and brownish greens opening into an overcast and equally wide sky. Title fills lower half of the cover (gray on white) and bleeds slightly into the photo. The escape from suburbia was via history's fields. A childhood house went latent and invisible. Its green yard: a minor field framed by fences. Bells rang in wet season. To return meant doing battle with years. We took notes on love, made gods of want.
October 17, 2025 at 9:59 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Packing for @lityoungstown.bsky.social and it’s cool we’re so organized it’s totally under control no suppressed chaos nope📚📚📚
kermit the frog is dancing in a room in front of a wall .
ALT: kermit the frog is dancing in a room in front of a wall .
media.tenor.com
October 16, 2025 at 4:56 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
It is a DANGEROUS WORLD out there, in the U.S. post—but thankfully, double cartoning took all the force, and not a book bumped! 🥹🙏💙 📚
Editor Han’s hand opening long edge of book box which has been shredded in the mail—Encounters for the Living and the Dead by Jameela F. Dallis just peeking through, unharmed BLESS
October 14, 2025 at 5:01 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Bookshop has free shipping today! Find River River Book titles there 🌊 🌊 📚 #poetry #booksky
Our Poetry Catalog
Checkout out this list on Bookshop
bookshop.org
October 8, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by River River Books
nfako.bsky.social
Louise Glück
Vespers I don't wonder where you are anymore. You're in the garden; you're where John is, in the dirt, abstracted, holding his green trowel. This is how he gardens: fifteen minutes of intense effort, fifteen minutes of ecstatic contemplation. Sometimes I work beside him, doing the shade chores, weeding, thinning the lettuces; sometimes I watch from the porch near the upper garden until twilight makes lamps of the first lilies: all this time, peace never leaves him. But it rushes through me, not as sustenance the flower holds but like bright light through the bare tree.
October 8, 2025 at 8:30 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Editor @amorak.bsky.social is at home resting, and if you can share a poem or a book recommendation, I know he’d love it 💙🙏💐
Poetry meme from fleabag, wedding scene with both sisters, text boxes being: Lying in bed Lying in bed ordering poetry books
October 8, 2025 at 2:26 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
🥰💙🎉

itascabooks.com/products/enc...
Become mollusk. Notice when these poems crack you open. Notice when you are reading from your soul places. Your calcified shells. Notice the intimate irritant becoming pearl. Mollusks chemosynthesize the radioactive isotopes of volatile earth in the broken places at the bottom of the ocean. This too is the work of these poems. Become mollusk and notice what changes. - Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival is a Promise Printed at BOOKMOBILE CRAFT DIGITAL ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE POEMS DEAD JAMEELA F. DALLIS Available at ITASCA BOOKS DISTRIBUTION & FULFILLMENT A DIVISION OF BOOKMOBILE
October 3, 2025 at 4:40 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Golden Fig Books in Durham and Carrboro now have Encounters for the Living and the Dead by Jameela F. Dallis and Field Notes by @egcunningham.bsky.social in stock! 💙📚🎉
hanvanderhart.bsky.social Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · Oct 2
Good day at my local bookshop, Golden Fig Books / while dropping off books for @riverriverbooks.bsky.social #booksky
White kitchen counter with a pair of red sunnies and two books: BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY OUR ANDROMEDA (book of poetry, Copper Canyon Press, 2012) And Deliberate Prose SELECTED ESSAYS 1952-1995 ALLEN GINSBERG FOREWORD BY EDWARD SANDERS / EDITED BY BILL MORGAN "These essays rise toward the incantatory power of poetry." -San Francisco Chronicle
October 2, 2025 at 10:51 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
When you have nine copies of a just-published book remaining and a festival upcoming and more orders coming in and booksellers writing you and it’s a good (?) problem but it’s still a little stressful we’re just human, tbh
a muppet with red hair and a blue jacket is holding a green jar .
ALT: a muppet with red hair and a blue jacket is holding a green jar .
media.tenor.com
October 2, 2025 at 12:04 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Oh we’re happy to see Jameela F. Dallis’s Encounters for the Living and the Dead on @bookmobile-itasca.bsky.social’s Top 10 for September list! Thanks to booksellers and readers everywhere 🙏💙📚🎉

itascabooks.com/products/enc...
ITASCA'S TOP I0, SEPTEMBER '25 1. Free the People to Free the Money to Free the People - Organize the Rich - Eds. Michael Gast, Marian Moore & Alex T. Tom 2. Your Year of Wonders - Beaver's Pond Press - Nick Tasler 3. Lucia Morning in Sweden - Nodin Press - Ewa Rydecker 4. Mistër E's Eclectic Compendium of Wondrous Hits - Beaver's Pond Press - Elias Mondegreen 5. Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction - Rose Metal Press - Dinty W. Moore 6. Fam: The Remarkable Story of a Canada Goose Adopted by Sandhill Cranes - Beaver's Pond Press - Martha Harding & Gary Noren 7. Little Deaths All in a Row - Jaded Ibis Press - Elizabeth Earley 8. Beyond Grit - Wise Ink - Cindra Kamphoff 9. Encounters for the Living and the Dead - River River Books - Jameela F. Dallis 10. Hiro Doggie - Literati Press Comics and Novels - John Eric Osborn & Charles J. Martin Find More Great Books at www.ltascaBooks.com ITASCA BOOKS DISTRIBUTION & FULFILLMENT A DIVISION OF BOOKMOBILE
October 1, 2025 at 8:56 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Excerpt from Beth Gilstrap’s forthcoming THERE IS NEWS ALONG THE OHIO RIVER (@riverriverbooks.bsky.social, 2026!) 🌊
October 1, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Reposted by River River Books
hanvanderhart.bsky.social
Send me your students’ poems! 🌸💫📖

Nomination details at link below.
awpwriter.org awpwriter.org @awpwriter.org · Sep 30
The 2026 AWP Intro Journals Project judge in poetry is @hanvanderhart.bsky.social, author of LARKS and others. Read their bio, along with the bios of the other judges, on our website. AWP member program directors can submit nominations October 1–November 30, 2025.
AWP Intro Journals Project Judges
awpwriter.org
September 30, 2025 at 10:37 PM
Reposted by River River Books
niina.bsky.social
Cameo from the nice folks of @riverriverbooks.bsky.social whomst I aggressed into posing for a photo at their book fair table
September 28, 2025 at 8:51 PM