At once captivating and poetic storytelling, a reflection on personal history, and the coming of age in a time of climate crisis, What the River Was invites us to cross into a world of McIver’s creation, a world not wholly our own, but one that looks just enough like ours to keep us wondering: could this be us?

In a year that has not happened in ripples or waves but in whitewater, rushing us toward a destination not yet known to us, What the River Was offers us a chance to pause and to consider the beauty of the world around us, the gravity of small things, and the quiet moments of our everday lives. At the same time, What the River Was asks us to examine the irony of the moments when our awe and appreciation for the environment are overshadowed by overconsumption and inevitably, destruction.

By incorporating both original and found poetry, poetry that pulls words and phrases from existing texts and transforms them into something new, in this two-part collection, we are given the perfect metaphor to describe how we can approach the climate crisis: by leaning into a meaningful repurposing of what already exists.