The work of author and artist BASIA IRLAND focuses on international water issues, especially rivers, waterborne diseases, and water scarcity. She collaborates with scholars from diverse disciplines on projects including rainwater harvesting systems, documentary filmmaking, and international implementation of waterborne disease projects. Founder of the arts and ecology program at the University of New Mexico, she is professor emerita in the department of art and art history.

"This is a truly beautiful book, a revelation and a joy for all of us who seek to live in better communion with our Earth. With a poet's lyricism and a naturalist's sensitivity to the richness, preciousness, and precarity of our rivers, Irland conjures that wonder we feel mid-stream: invigorated, vitalized, attuned to our spectacular luck at living on a planet animated by water. Rivers have never spoken more urgently than as they do through Irland's words, reminding us to sustain the waterways that in turn sustain us, and delivering us to the thrill of their company."--Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, senior editor, Poets & Writers Magazine--Emma Komlos-Hrobsky

"Basia Irland is perhaps the most significant living example of social art in the sense that she seeks to connect people to the land and to each other in a shared respect for what sustains life: water."--Sabino Frassà, Italian curator--Sabino Frassà

"Knowledge about and reverence for water has never been as important as it is today. Irland's essays beautifully weave in the critical threads of conservation and education, along with her reverence for water and its role in life and on Earth. Her work has set her apart as one of the liquid realm's most eloquent biographers."Dahr Jamail, author of The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
--Dahr Jamail

"As a wetland/river ecologist, I am excited about this amazing, new book by the artist Basia Irland. The twenty-five essays in it take readers to twenty-five different rivers around the globe, allowing them to listen to their voices. A river is a living thing as we are: it is about time to firmly share that understanding as part of common humanity, which I believe has just been made possible thanks to Basia. What Rivers Know, being culturally on time, will greatly assist with the ongoing, worldwide movement to recognize the rights of rivers. The first-person narrative in each essay makes it easy for readers to feel connected at the emotional level to the river and to finally listen to what the river has to say. Please allow yourself to be intimate with each river as you go through each essay in this book. If you do you will never see the rivers the same way you have before."--Changwoo Ahn, professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University and founder of The Rain Project--Changwoo Ahn

"In What Rivers Know, Basia Irland, academic, artist and an advocate for water, explores 25 rivers around the world allowing them to speak as people in the first person sharing their stories of the changes they have been witness to. Rivers that flow through indigenous lands in North America talk of colonisation and conflict and the erosion of their riparian rights. Other rivers from Thailand, China and India bemoan the impact of development, including embankments and encroachments on their once untamed waters. Basia's beautiful photographs, and the simplicity and insightfulness of her writing, are at the heart of her call for being mindful of how our lives, and that of the non-human world, have been shaped by our rivers."--Sara Ahmed, Founder, The Living Waters Museum, India and Vice President, the Global Network of Water Museums--Sara Ahmed

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Pub date: 2024-12-26

Length: 256 pages