Denise Riley has pursued her singular path with a determined disregard for poetic fashion: a poet of immense musical gifts and formal skill, as happy in traditional forms as experimental, her non-alignment with any ‘tribe’ has led to a rich and various poetry that, while densely allusive and intellectually uncompromising, remains emotionally open towards the reader at the most profound level.
Say Something Back
, her lyric meditation on bereavement, won Riley universal acclaim – and a wide and long-deserved readership. Her
Selected Poems
offers a generous overview of a working life which has taken in philosophy, feminism, literary history, song and aphorism – and within which the old certainties are interrogated and shaken at every turn. Hers is a voice through which we come to better understand one another, the meaning of our time here, and the nature of human communication itself.
‘Wide-ranging, sometimes anguished, her poems are fascinating and often beautiful, and certainly more than usually thought-provoking.’ -
Guardian