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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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riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Repost with the last book you enjoyed, and we’ll enter you in a drawing for one of our new fall poetry titles! 🍂📚💙

We are thankful for our readers ❤️

riverriverbooks.org/store/
Cover of FIELD NOTES, design by Alban Fischer Cover photograph of field landscape and lake in distance and mountains by author E.G. CUNNINGHAM POEMS "This field transforms looking to wanting.” RIVERRIVERBOOKS.ORG Cover of encounters for the living in the dead, designed by Alban Fischer Cover beaches at Dutch still life with lemons and grapes and oysters ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD POEMS JAMEELA F. DALLIS "I have become siren, a hallowed hollow singing thing-" RIVERRIVERBOOKS.ORG
November 25, 2025 at 11:44 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Jameela F. Dallis, reading at Weave & Spin last night 🌙 🌊 🦪

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November 20, 2025 at 3:22 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Need a gift idea this season? We’ve got you covered, and will ship to you free with the code 2025GIFT 🌊 🌊📚💙 #poetry #Booksky

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Give the gift of small press poetry this year! Free shipping & 10% with code 2025GIFT RiverRiverBooks.org
November 18, 2025 at 2:49 PM
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
Editor @amorak.bsky.social at the @riverriverbooks.bsky.social table today at @lityoungstown.bsky.social 🌊 🌊 📚 We had such a great day selling books!
Amorak and a blue River River table with books under a wall of art in McDonouhugh Museum of Art
October 18, 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
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
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
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
“America, aromatic // with ravages.”

Lauren Camp, An Eye in Each Square

riverriverbooks.org/store
MUST LEARN NEITHER I had plundered past nervous. A tense Walmart truck clanging the interstate. Smoke gnawing the face of some mountain. America, aromatic with ravages. In schism. Sacrificed. I stayed woke most nights near the door. Occupied with every handle. Four years my father had gone from corridor to quiver and I mustered my saddle to get to him often. Four years of crinkled conversing. Yes, and ginger. I shivered through rooms of my home in the desert with its stoic astonishments and took on some needles. I couldn't settle the ache. The curt country and my family. Every ache size, every shape. To reset, I've come to the distance, to watch the ocean repeat how to unfinish. I brought with me a light jacket and a thick book about Agnes Martin. I'm not sure why I packed it, what it celebrates, but I know the artist and her simple lines against excess. Know she made sacred an emptiness. Maybe I'll hear thin strands of refuge apart from the chaos that circles. What I want is nothing. No meaning, no matter, no more. I've run away with the most fragile questions. Haggard in a small room big enough for a bed with its modest blanket. I let my watch doze on the sill. Minor details hurtle over grasses. A windribbed fence. The land around me tugs. I don't know it. Fog covers. Blank space consumes me. I figure every day I'll navigate to the tail end of this small town with its translucent leavings. What I want to figure out is what could be in the neithers. I am entering a conversation with Agnes for no reason I yet understand. I am not looking to rivet to her, but to be extracted from the sharp cuff of politics, of dementia-tweaked presence, of the gravity of a future that keeps rolling toward me. How do you recover from a decisive wound? A line, a line: it never leaves you. An Eye in Each Square cover Designed by Alban Fischer Featuring mountains and wheat field in graphic squares
September 27, 2025 at 5:04 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Jameela F. Dallis reading from Encounters for the Living and the Dead at So and So Books in Raleigh, last night! 💙📚🎉

We had to place a second printing, two days after publication, because we were nearly out of books! 🎉🎉🎉

riverriverbooks.org/store
Jameela in a long blue dress and black shawl and red glasses reading in front of bookstore shelves. A pink oyster scarf is draped over a music stand in front of her. An abalone shell is on the floor nearby.
September 26, 2025 at 12:08 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Alexis Pauline Gumbs (@alexispauline.bsky.social) on Jameela F. Dallis’s ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD:

“Notice when these poems crack you open.”

Order your copy here: riverriverbooks.org/store
ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE POEMS DEAD JAMEELA F. DALLIS "I have become siren, a hallowed hollow singing thing—" now available at River River Books Design by Alban Fischer
September 23, 2025 at 2:55 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Erina Harris on @egcunningham.bsky.social’s FIELD NOTES:

“This beautiful epistemology of longing reminds us that looking is witnessing.”

Order here: riverriverbooks.org/store
E.G. CUNNINGHAM POEMS FIELD NOTES "This field transforms looking to wanting." now available at River River Books Cover design by Alban Fischer field notes against a blue background
September 23, 2025 at 1:36 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
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
September 23, 2025 at 12:03 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Encounters for the Living and the Dead publishes tomorrow, and you can still preorder your copy here!

riverriverbooks.org/store
ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE POEMS DEAD JAMEELA F. DALLIS Book cover design featuring a Dutch still life with lemons grapes oysters Cover design by Alban Fischer
September 22, 2025 at 4:23 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Particularly we love Lillian Durr’s reading of aromatic language in Dallis’s collection! So attentive & perceptive.

www.dogyardmag.com
Aromatic language is one of the most powerful motifs in the collection. It is represented in color choices (the clever use of lavender and lilac over other hues, invoking a floral sense memory), references to several spices and dishes throughout, and consistent attention to sensory experiences, especially tastes and scents. In its variety, the aromatic and flavorful undertones of the collection anchor the book as a complete work,
September 22, 2025 at 4:21 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Oh so very much over-the-moon by this lovely & attentive first review of Jameela F. Dallis’s Encounters for the Living and the Dead by Lillian Durr in @dogyardmag.com 💙📚🎉

Read review in full here! 👉 www.dogyardmag.com
"It makes sense then that the collection reads so beautifully as a love letter that spans all of time." Lillian Durr reviews Jameela F. Dallis's Encounters for the Living and the Dead in dogyard mag
September 22, 2025 at 4:13 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Tom Snarsky
IV Probably the most important factor in determining a person's politics, that I have seen, is the way they relate to ideas of mass psychosis or mass delusion. If they think of it as a they or we thing, if they think we can be helped. by Tom Snarsky in A Letter From the Mountain & Other Poems Animal Heart Press, 2025
September 20, 2025 at 4:47 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Found friend of the press @tomsnarsky.bsky.social’s new at @animalheartpress.bsky.social along with @bethgordonpoet.bsky.social 🥰🙏💙🎉🎉
Photograph of A Letter From The Mountain & Other Poems by Tom Snarsky, published by Animal Heart Press (2025), held by editor Han of River River Books in front of RRB table
September 20, 2025 at 4:45 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Come say hi! 🌊 🌊 📚
Han & Amorak at the River River Books table Amorak is wearing a pink polo & lanyard Han is wearing a sunflower dress and orange KN95
September 20, 2025 at 3:38 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Come see us at #PunchBucketLit!

riverriverbooks.org/store
Amorak Huey seated at River River Books table with 8 (!!!) books, banner behind
September 20, 2025 at 1:49 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Also, RIVER RIVER BOOKS will be tabling at Punch Bucket Lit next Saturday! Stop by and say hi, and check out our new fall titles! 🌊 🍂 🌊 🍂 ✨

Editor @hanvanderhart.bsky.social will also be on the Queer Poetics panel:
Retro rainbow poster with the details: Queer Poetics with Kay E. Bancroft Evelyn Berry Han VanderHart moderated by Dustin Brookshire Saturday, 9/20 3-4:45pm Punch Bucket Lit PUNCH BUCKET LIT logo with cat reading a book
September 14, 2025 at 2:33 PM
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Durham folks! Don’t forget that Jameela F. Dallis’s launch party for ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD is a week from today! 💙🎉🎉🎉
book launch party with Jameela F. Dallis Sunday, September 21 | 6 pm delafia wine bar 6:15 pm reading book signing to follow ENCOUNTERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD 5 pm seasonal pop-up by Phoebe Lawless POEMS JAMEELA F. DALLIS delafia wine bar | 1103 s. roxboro st, durham, nc
September 14, 2025 at 2:29 PM