Dart frequently combines the two, moving in the same sentence from religious invocation to marketing jabber ("may He pull you out at Littlehempston, at the pumphouse, which is my patch, the world's largest operational Sirofloc plant"). I am from Devon and have spent my life growing up around the Dart and this makes my heart ache with those memories. Like Wisdom Hely's sandwich-board men in Ulysses, Dart gives the alphabet human form when a swimmer spells out what she is doing by visualising her body as an S, W and M.

He represents the cycle of creation and death, the primordial soup, and the fear of degrading into its ingredients. Using these records and voices as a sort of poetic census, she creates in Dart a narrative of the river, tracking its life from source to sea. Through the voices of people whose lives touch upon a river, Oswald's poem brings a place and community to light in a subtle and generous way. I usually struggle to read long pieces of poetry, and so I was surprised to find that I enjoyed this so much. There were tremendous successes on the actor’s parts to get into the spirit of each voice, but it was unfortunate that ultimately a feeling of diversity predominated.Here, and at many other points, there is delicately insinuated sexuality beneath the surface of exchanges. Cryptospiridion smaller than a fleck of talcum powder which squashes and elongates and bursts in the warmth of the gut… This is what keeps you and me alive, this is the real work of the river. As with many collections, I feel like I would get more out of it upon a reread but on the whole this was a very enjoyable and atmospheric collection.

The one thing that I found slightly problematic in a way, is that because she knows the area and the river itself so well, and has such an intimate knowledge of every water-polished rock, overhanging branch and darting fish, I sometimes think maybe you need to have walked along the banks of this river yourself, to fully understand all the details she goes into, as it is a very in depth, almost analytical poem in some ways. Over the course of three years Alice Oswald recorded conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. I saw flashes of truly moving lines, only to have it gulped up and sent downstream to make way for the mingling of facts, anecdotes, and roles. David Wheatley said it was a "heartening book", and that "Oswald shows that poetry need not choose between Hughesian deep myth and Larkinesque social realism". This book-length poem follows the course of the Dart river, and is full of voices from those who live and work around it.

I am no expert, I am learning, but I do love the connection between the people of the land (the ‘whenua’) and their mountain and river. This note gives just a glimpse of the complex labor of translation behind this work—one that surpasses the conventional personification of natural forms.