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Selected Poems
"Poetry's future probably lies in the direction Denise Riley is taking and many of us read her work to find out how to do it. Her words, packed with personal and political meaning, burst through metaphor and philosophical sophistication to give new hope for the craft" Douglas Oliver. SELECTED POEMS includes selections from Denise Riley's published works as well as new, previously uncollected poems.
- GenresPoetry
111 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
6 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Denise Riley
52 books59 followersDenise Riley (born 1948) is an English poet and philosopher who began to be published in the 1970s.
Her poetry is remarkable for its paradoxical interrogation of selfhood within the lyric mode. Her critical writings on motherhood, women in history, "identity", and philosophy of language, are recognised as an important contribution to feminism and contemporary philosophy. She was Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A.D. White Professor-at-large at Cornell University. She was formerly Writer in Residence at Tate Gallery London, and has held fellowships at Brown University and at Birkbeck, University of London. Among her poetry publications is Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair (1996). She lives in London.
Her poetry is remarkable for its paradoxical interrogation of selfhood within the lyric mode. Her critical writings on motherhood, women in history, "identity", and philosophy of language, are recognised as an important contribution to feminism and contemporary philosophy. She was Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A.D. White Professor-at-large at Cornell University. She was formerly Writer in Residence at Tate Gallery London, and has held fellowships at Brown University and at Birkbeck, University of London. Among her poetry publications is Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair (1996). She lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 17, 2020
Just astonishing. Such a command of voice and style, it is dark and funny and heart-stirring.
October 24, 2022
“But let it / talk its golden talk if we / don’t understand it”.
An intellectually rigorous collection, steeped in philosophy and theory, that undoubtedly displays Riley’s lyric brilliance and mastery of voice, but which for me, personally, was quite impenetrable. I’m sure this would reward serious study, however, and I’d be eager to read an edition which contained extensive annotation and commentary to aid comprehension. Saying that, the poems included from Riley’s ‘Say Something Back’ are beautiful meditations on bereavement, so I’d recommend seeking out that book specifically. Also, ‘Affections of the Ear’ is one of my favourite poems because of how it irreverently and ironically reinvents the Narcissus myth, as retold by Echo: “If he’d cried ‘I’d die before I fuck you’, at least I could have echoed back that ‘Fuck you.’”.
An intellectually rigorous collection, steeped in philosophy and theory, that undoubtedly displays Riley’s lyric brilliance and mastery of voice, but which for me, personally, was quite impenetrable. I’m sure this would reward serious study, however, and I’d be eager to read an edition which contained extensive annotation and commentary to aid comprehension. Saying that, the poems included from Riley’s ‘Say Something Back’ are beautiful meditations on bereavement, so I’d recommend seeking out that book specifically. Also, ‘Affections of the Ear’ is one of my favourite poems because of how it irreverently and ironically reinvents the Narcissus myth, as retold by Echo: “If he’d cried ‘I’d die before I fuck you’, at least I could have echoed back that ‘Fuck you.’”.
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June 3, 2024cicada humings / 'No, it's my disbelief in my own entrails' / 'To be sheer air, and mousseline!'
May 12, 2025
yes i skimmed a little but it still counts x
May 31, 2022
Being a radio DJ was hard after Smashy and Nicey.
Being a newsreader was problematic after The Day Today.
Being a Rock God was probably getting tricky before Spinal Tap.
Being a lyric poet was tricky long before Kevin Eldon’s Paul Hamilton.
How do you do something that can’t really be done anymore?
You can mock the form, mock yourself. You can critique it, critique yourself. Above all, you can use irony. But all those approaches can become a pose.
One of the things I love about Riley is the way that she comes at the problem from different angles, but she never gives up on it.
Her poems feel carefully balanced.
I love lines like this;
‘These sentences come fast, give me no grief – does that mean
That their whole tone is false and that their flow slid out
Of some cheap ease-machine? Oh how that man do howl?”
And;
“No I don’t much like this bland authoritative tone either
but it is what I took from years of reworded loss.”
I like the sense of Riley adjusting her position slightly, but never going too far and becoming a pose.
I love this
“The only point of holding up my blood is if you’d think ‘So what?
We’ve all got some of that’ – since then you’d each feel better, less apart – Hardly:
It’s more for me to know I’ve got some”
Here she seems to be suggesting an anti-Romantic goal to look for the commonness of all experience. She won’t insist on her exceptional, super-sensitive sensibility. If she suffers it is not because she is different (and by implication better) like the Romantic artist. But then, this position perhaps becomes too grandiose, and she balances it against her own individual motives.
I put off reading her for a long time because I’d read that she was a philosopher. I thought she would be too clever for me to understand and enjoy. For a philosopher her poetry is very un-abstract.
I’m a painter myself and there’s lots for a visual artist or anyone else to enjoy. Like Yeats she uses lots of colours.
I loved this line;
“If I seem mirthful it is tinsel and spangles on a black ground.”
And this;
“Blind in the green afterglow of a crimson dress
Poised by a pale wall then gone on out of the light”
And this;
“Black shadows, sharp scattered green
Sunlit in lime, in acid leaves.”
And this;
‘There was such brilliance lifting off the sea, it’s aquamarine strip
blocked in behind white-dashed mimosas”
There’s so much I’d like to quote. So much lovely stuff.
This is a totally brilliant collection.
Can’t wait to get into Lurex!
Being a newsreader was problematic after The Day Today.
Being a Rock God was probably getting tricky before Spinal Tap.
Being a lyric poet was tricky long before Kevin Eldon’s Paul Hamilton.
How do you do something that can’t really be done anymore?
You can mock the form, mock yourself. You can critique it, critique yourself. Above all, you can use irony. But all those approaches can become a pose.
One of the things I love about Riley is the way that she comes at the problem from different angles, but she never gives up on it.
Her poems feel carefully balanced.
I love lines like this;
‘These sentences come fast, give me no grief – does that mean
That their whole tone is false and that their flow slid out
Of some cheap ease-machine? Oh how that man do howl?”
And;
“No I don’t much like this bland authoritative tone either
but it is what I took from years of reworded loss.”
I like the sense of Riley adjusting her position slightly, but never going too far and becoming a pose.
I love this
“The only point of holding up my blood is if you’d think ‘So what?
We’ve all got some of that’ – since then you’d each feel better, less apart – Hardly:
It’s more for me to know I’ve got some”
Here she seems to be suggesting an anti-Romantic goal to look for the commonness of all experience. She won’t insist on her exceptional, super-sensitive sensibility. If she suffers it is not because she is different (and by implication better) like the Romantic artist. But then, this position perhaps becomes too grandiose, and she balances it against her own individual motives.
I put off reading her for a long time because I’d read that she was a philosopher. I thought she would be too clever for me to understand and enjoy. For a philosopher her poetry is very un-abstract.
I’m a painter myself and there’s lots for a visual artist or anyone else to enjoy. Like Yeats she uses lots of colours.
I loved this line;
“If I seem mirthful it is tinsel and spangles on a black ground.”
And this;
“Blind in the green afterglow of a crimson dress
Poised by a pale wall then gone on out of the light”
And this;
“Black shadows, sharp scattered green
Sunlit in lime, in acid leaves.”
And this;
‘There was such brilliance lifting off the sea, it’s aquamarine strip
blocked in behind white-dashed mimosas”
There’s so much I’d like to quote. So much lovely stuff.
This is a totally brilliant collection.
Can’t wait to get into Lurex!
January 27, 2025
“The stove within me rages. A filmless sun burns. In cobalt air. / Hills fired with living gold. I am walked and scorched to death. / Drenched in a hot white mist. Grand coruscation of sudden light.” Denise Riley’s essay Time Lived, Without Its Flow, alongside her latest Selected Poems, prime examples of the poet’s own “coruscation”. The themes of 'Time Lived...' are picked up in many of the poems included in Selected Poems, especially the entirety of Riley’s previous release Say Something Back; on re-reading these poems I have been struck for the umpteenth time by A Part Song and its devastating twentieth and final section, as well as many of the other and generally shorter poems considering loss and limbo. The greatest virtue though of this Selected Poems is that, by presenting the selections by publication, in chronological order, the trajectory of Riley’s work is tangible and the evocative glory of her earlier work is brought to the fore. Two essential works from one of our greatest living poets, works to wrestle with as much as to enjoy.
January 3, 2026
Mixed, sometimes excellent.
I found the older poems difficult and at times unreadable, but the later poems to be excellent. Next time I'll read this book back to front.
I found the older poems difficult and at times unreadable, but the later poems to be excellent. Next time I'll read this book back to front.
March 6, 2017
Ugh what a waste!
December 14, 2020
Good overview, but not a fan of the organization of poems. Say Something Back is also a bit of an outlier here without Time Regained, Without Its Flow.
January 25, 2014
I am not a huge fan of contemporary poetry but this was quite good. Not exceptional but it was enjoyable. It was more a 3.5 star poetry collection.
October 2, 2023
(A five-star read, with the exception of SAY SOMETHING BACK - maybe because it's a complete collection in a Selected that is otherwise slim and intense.)
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews