Poetry Reading: Denise Riley

Denise Riley is one of the most compelling contemporary English poets. From her first collection Marxism for Infants (1977) to her most recent, Say Something Back (2016), she has brought a fine critical intelligence into play within the affective domain of the lyric, combining linguistic play and intellectual enquiry in beautifully crafted texts. Her Selected Poems appeared in 2000. Her elegiac sequence ‘A Part Song’ won the Forward Prize for best poem in 2012 and Say Something Back was short-listed for the Forward Prize for best collection in 2016.

Formerly Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and now A.D. White Professor at Columbia University, Denise Riley is also the author of a series of influential theoretical studies, including The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony (2000),  Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2004) and (with Jean-Jacques Lecercle) The Force of Language  (2004). Her poetry too is a dynamic embodiment of – and investigation into - the force of language.

This is a Writers at York event.