Due North

by Peter Riley

Due North is a poem in twelve chapters concerned with human movement northwards or out in the quest for work, subsistence, settlement and gratification, and in danger of getting trapped in various enclosures, including thought-traps. The cast includes migrant workers, returning soldiers, children growing up, and population movements such as the early 19th Century descent on the northern manufacturing districts from demographic disaster zones, with my awareness of my own ancestry among the displaced Irish of Manchester and West Yorkshire. Woven into this are various artistic, poetical, cultural and instinctive ventures to traverse cold and emptiness, limit and futility, in the hope of attaining the metaphor of lasting warmth. Its pattern is that of a long sequence of beginnings, some of which reach their conclusions, usually elsewhere in the text, some of which don’t. The textual mode is literal and lyrical, to posit the value of these two forces in sustaining hope.


“…it is a moving poem with a lot of your life in it. You slip by so many nets. Nobody else is writing this.” — Kelvin Corcoran

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Des Bladet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got myself this for Christmas based on a section included in a Forward anthology, where its willingness to be difficult and have themes and scope set it off from the exquisitely-phrased micro-epiphanies that made up the bulk of the volume.

On its own, though, I found it less convincing. Riley is up to something, certainly, but I only glimpsed fragments of it, and the verse isn't rhythmically very compelling. It might well reward greater effort than currently seems likely, though.

[Mark Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

poetry that is worth taking time over ; set in the North, Riley's epic style sometimes veers towards Whitman,but he can hit the lyric sweet spots too; I like the way in which his material comes from everywhere, fragments of AE Housman, description of the 23 arches in the Stockport viaduct, war refugees, soapstone. Still reading, looking forward to his account of The Ascent of Kinder Scout.