Since rivers nourished modern cities from London to New York and served as the lifeblood of our earliest civilizations (the Tigris and Euphrates of Mesopotamia, the Ganges in India, the Nile in Egypt, and the Yellow River in China), it is only natural that poets have for centuries derived fundamental meanings and metaphors from their endless currents. Shakespeare, Dryden, Wordsworth, Byron, Ted Hughes, John Betjeman, and Alice Oswald are examples of English poets. Irish poets include Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, and Paul Muldoon. Scottish and Welsh poets include Henry Vaughan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robin Robertson, and Gillian Clarke. From Whitman, Emerson, and Emily Dickinson to Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver, Natasha Trethewey, and Grace Paley, there are a plethora of American poets who deserve mention. Folk music. Spirituals from Africa-America. Poems from ancient Egypt and Rome. From medieval China and Japan. And a truly international selection of modern poets from Europe (France, Italy, Russia, Serbia), India, Africa, Australia and South and Central America, all combining in celebration of the rivers of the world. From the Mississippi to the Limpopo. From the Dart to the Danube.