What the River May Bring: Impressions of Interior Alaska

"Welcome to Alaska, where the grebes glide on the cobalt water and the caribou shed their antlers. Travel to these timeless, wild landscapes with an accomplished ecopoet as a guide. In these pages, with glorious detail, humor, respect and awe, Erin Robertson takes us on a grand midsummer adventure. Don your metaphorical rubber boots and prepare to fall in love with the swans, the moose, the moss, the lakes, the blueberries, the lightning, the haunting cry of the loon. This book is pure treasure."
-Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Unfolding and host of The Poetic Path

"Erin Robertson's What the River May Bring is a poetic journey of healing through Alaska's interior wilderness. Written during a two-week Voices of the Wilderness residency, these gorgeously wrought poems trace rivers, dunes, burn scars, and birch forests. Alongside the cranes, loons, and swans populating these pages are the people whose lives are intertwined with the land. From Arrival to Departure, this is an urgent collection with its ear firmly to the ground, honoring this unique ecosystem and inviting us not only to witness the beauty in the landscape but also to pay attention to the awe rising within ourselves."
-Jeremy Schraffenberger, editor at the North American Review and author of American Sad

"If you can't make it to the Alaskan wilderness, or if you want to be inspired to go, here is your poetic guide. Listen to the 'soft sound of wind moving from the dunes/ the wild ancient chatter of sandhill cranes' or see 'the white punctuation of swan/ or the brown bulk of moose.' Over and over, these poems say, look, listen, closer, imagine-a shed caribou's antler becomes portal to deep time, a flock of grebe chicks 'skedaddle in a burst of paddling feet, ' and fireweed becomes a synesthetic riff that 'smells like red hots/ looks like roller skating.' There's a true intimacy in this voice-spilling with wonder, tipping into humor, moved by compassion, and always informed by a naturalist's wisdom. With one ear to the world and one ear to the poem's song, these poems distill gorgeous imagery to evoke the lives in this wild northern landscape. From start to finish, I loved the journey these beautiful poems brought me on."
-Anne Haven McDonnell, author of Breath on a Coal and Living with Wolves

"Erin Robertson spent two weeks in Alaska's Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge, and these poems carry back what she found: loons calling across Drop Lake, caribou antlers weathered to 'chalk white, ' the 'crimped downy frizzed fibers' of otter undercoat. A trained biologist, Robertson writes with detail about dune succession and soil profiles, describing fireweed in synesthetic terms ('smells like red hots / looks like roller skating music') and noting that ancient-looking spruce samples 'came back 290 years young.' Yet her scientific eye serves emotional and aesthetic purposes as the collection moves between wilderness solitude and community life-between grief and delight, precise observation and playful invention-always oriented by Robertson's ability to find, as she writes, 'a one-inch bit of wonder' wherever she looks."
-Radha Marcum, author of Pine Soot Tendon Bone and Bloodline