EBOOK
About
'One of the most eloquent thinkers about our life in language'–The Sunday Times
'As lively to the ear as prose can be'-Adam Piette
A Chorus of Ears is a series of essays on voice, lyric and the persona of the poet from one of our greatest living English poets. Denise Riley contemplates how a poet's public persona can hold more significance than their actual poetry in the modern literary world. She reflects on how prize culture can transform criticism into a beauty contest, and limit our ability to meet the lyric on its own terms.
What might be discovered, Riley asks, if we liberate the poem from the person of the author? From where does its own voice spring? In allowing the poem to speak, what might we hear?
Including a foreword by leading poet and critic Don Paterson.
'One of the great poets of our time '–New Statesman Essays on voice, lyric and the persona of the poet from one of the greatest living English poets. Denise Riley lives in London. Her prose books include War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (1983), 'Am I That Name?' Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (1988), The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony (2000), The Force of Language (with Jean-Jacques Lecercle; 2004), Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2005), Time Lived, Without Its Flow (2012; revised edition 2019) and A Chorus of Ears: On the 'Voice of the Poem', 2026. Her poetry collections include Marxism for Infants (1977), Dry Air (1985), Mop Mop Georgette (1993), Penguin Modern Poets series 2, vol 10 (with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair; 1996), Selected Poems (2000, revised 2019), Say Something Back (2016), Penguin Modern Poets series 3, vol 6 (with Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine; 2017) and Lurex (2022).
"This is a book which sets Riley alongside Virginia Woolf, confirming her as one of the most profound poetic thinkers of our time"-Deryn Rees-Jones
"Very occasionally, and always at the right time, an Angel of Poetry appears, holding up a light"-Carol Ann Duffy, former UK Poet Laureate
"A much-needed reminder of inspiration's independence, A Chorus of Ears gently resets the coordinates of contemporary poetry away from the mechanical and literal-minded. My repeated thought on reading it was 'Oh thank goodness for Denise Riley'"-Leontia Flynn
"Daring intellectually and sensitively tuned to the interiority of the poem and its making. [A Chorus of Ears] asks us to think again about 'voice' in poetry, finding language to articulate the difficult borderland between an inner listening and the already said, the living and the dead"-Linda Anderson, author of Elizabeth Bishop: Lines of Connection
"One of the most eloquent thinkers about our life in language"-The Sunday Times
"There is so much going on in these essays, the head spins: so much to learn and to take in, so bewilderingly febrile and supersubtle as they are, so refreshingly advocative of an exuberant innerness that preserves secrecy and privacy, allowing in more quiet air to breathe within the solidity of the poem as 'secreted life' and transpersonal voice."-Adam Piette, Blackbox Manifold
"Her strengths are so varied: notice one quality you admire, and another follows hard behind. Riley is an enormously gifted writer"-Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
"Wondrous... one of the great poets of our time"-New Statesman
"An extraordinary thinker... Riley's clarity of vision and expression is revelatory."-Declan Ryan
'As lively to the ear as prose can be'-Adam Piette
A Chorus of Ears is a series of essays on voice, lyric and the persona of the poet from one of our greatest living English poets. Denise Riley contemplates how a poet's public persona can hold more significance than their actual poetry in the modern literary world. She reflects on how prize culture can transform criticism into a beauty contest, and limit our ability to meet the lyric on its own terms.
What might be discovered, Riley asks, if we liberate the poem from the person of the author? From where does its own voice spring? In allowing the poem to speak, what might we hear?
Including a foreword by leading poet and critic Don Paterson.
'One of the great poets of our time '–New Statesman Essays on voice, lyric and the persona of the poet from one of the greatest living English poets. Denise Riley lives in London. Her prose books include War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (1983), 'Am I That Name?' Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (1988), The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony (2000), The Force of Language (with Jean-Jacques Lecercle; 2004), Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2005), Time Lived, Without Its Flow (2012; revised edition 2019) and A Chorus of Ears: On the 'Voice of the Poem', 2026. Her poetry collections include Marxism for Infants (1977), Dry Air (1985), Mop Mop Georgette (1993), Penguin Modern Poets series 2, vol 10 (with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair; 1996), Selected Poems (2000, revised 2019), Say Something Back (2016), Penguin Modern Poets series 3, vol 6 (with Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine; 2017) and Lurex (2022).
"This is a book which sets Riley alongside Virginia Woolf, confirming her as one of the most profound poetic thinkers of our time"-Deryn Rees-Jones
"Very occasionally, and always at the right time, an Angel of Poetry appears, holding up a light"-Carol Ann Duffy, former UK Poet Laureate
"A much-needed reminder of inspiration's independence, A Chorus of Ears gently resets the coordinates of contemporary poetry away from the mechanical and literal-minded. My repeated thought on reading it was 'Oh thank goodness for Denise Riley'"-Leontia Flynn
"Daring intellectually and sensitively tuned to the interiority of the poem and its making. [A Chorus of Ears] asks us to think again about 'voice' in poetry, finding language to articulate the difficult borderland between an inner listening and the already said, the living and the dead"-Linda Anderson, author of Elizabeth Bishop: Lines of Connection
"One of the most eloquent thinkers about our life in language"-The Sunday Times
"There is so much going on in these essays, the head spins: so much to learn and to take in, so bewilderingly febrile and supersubtle as they are, so refreshingly advocative of an exuberant innerness that preserves secrecy and privacy, allowing in more quiet air to breathe within the solidity of the poem as 'secreted life' and transpersonal voice."-Adam Piette, Blackbox Manifold
"Her strengths are so varied: notice one quality you admire, and another follows hard behind. Riley is an enormously gifted writer"-Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
"Wondrous... one of the great poets of our time"-New Statesman
"An extraordinary thinker... Riley's clarity of vision and expression is revelatory."-Declan Ryan