Cover of "What the River Was" book by Loblolly Press, featuring artwork inspired by rivers and nature.

What the River Was

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What the River Was moves in three currents: the natural world of South Carolina creeks and watershed margins; found poems drawn from National Geographic, language repurposed to tell the story of a planet being stripped; and a return to the river as family history and grief.

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 2026.
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What the River Was moves in three currents: the natural world of South Carolina creeks and watershed margins; found poems drawn from National Geographic, language repurposed to tell the story of a planet being stripped; and a return to the river as family history and grief alongside reckoning.

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 2026.

Andrew Mack is the Founder and Managing Editor of Loblolly Press. He oversees editorial direction, acquisitions, and author partnerships across the catalog. His work at the press is grounded in a commitment to sustained editorial care, transparency, and building space for writers whose work is often sidelined elsewhere. Andrew is the author of three poetry collections, Weekend Revival and What the River Was, and Beasts of Chase. and lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Person wearing a denim shirt standing in front of a forest

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