What the River Was

These poems track muskrats and herons, a father met on the shoulder of Highway 6, ancestors who walked south from Virginia after the Civil War and didn't all make it. The collection asks what we owe the land and each other, and finds that the answer — like the river — is the same thing.

The middle section draws on found language from National Geographic — words repurposed to tell the story of a planet being stripped while we watched and named things. It sits between the personal sections as both interruption and extension, a reminder that the private grief and the ecological one are the same grief.

What the River Was is Andrew Mack's second collection, re-released under Loblolly Press in 2025.

Andrew Mack (formerly McIver) is the Founder and Managing Editor of Loblolly Press. His commitment to fostering emerging writers particularly those from marginalized or underrepresented communities drives Loblolly Press's mission to showcase contemporary poetry, short fiction, and novels with a distinctly Southern voice. Andrew has published two collections of his own poetry, Weekend Revival and What the River Was. He lives in Asheville, NC with his partner.