First published in 1983, River celebrates fluvial landscapes, their creatures and their regenerative powers.
Inspired by Hughes’s love of fishing and by his environmental activism, the poems are a deftly and passionately attentive chronicle of change over the course of the seasons. West Country rivers predominate (‘The West Dart’ and ‘Torridge’), but other poems imagine or recall Japanese rivers or Celtic rivers, and ‘The Gulkana’ explores an ancient Alaskan watercourse.