Peter Riley
Encyclopedia
Peter Riley is a contemporary English poet, essayist, and editor
. Riley is known as a Cambridge poet, part of the group vaguely associated with J. H. Prynne
which today is acknowledged as an important epicenter of innovative poetry in the United Kingdom. Riley was an editor and major contributor to The English Intelligencer
. He is the author of ten books of poetry, and many small-press booklets.
, near Manchester
, and raised in an environment of working people, Riley "entered higher education through Britain’s post-war socialistic educational policies". He read English at Cambridge University and has since lived and worked in the UK and abroad in teaching at several levels and other occupations. A Cambridge resident since 1985, and ran a mail-order poetry book business for almost twenty years. He has written studies of Jack Spicer
, T. F. Powys
, improvised music, poetry, lead mines
, burial mounds, village carols
and Transylvanian string band
s, and has published two books of translations from the French poet Lorand Gaspar
. He has been an advocate for neglected British poets from the 1930s and 1940s, in particular Nicholas Moore
(1918-1986), and he has edited several posthumous books of Moore's.
Riley was the co-editor (with Andrew Crozier
and others) of the important poetry/poetics journal The English Intelligencer (1965-1968), and editor of the later Collection (1968-1970). From the 1980s to the 2000s he ran the imprint Poetical Histories, which focussed on brief (4-12pp) pamphlets published on fine paper. Notable publications included J.H. Prynne's Marzipan and his sole poem in Chinese, Jie ban mi Shi Hu; R. F. Langley
's Man Jack; and late work by the older poets Seán Rafferty
and Dorian Cooke
.
In the 1970s Riley was an important early promoter of and advocate for British free improvisation
, and the noted guitarist Derek Bailey was a lifelong friend; two of Bailey's late solo albums, Takes Fakes & Dead She Dances and Poetry and Playing, contain tracks of Bailey playing guitar while reading aloud from Riley's poetry. Several books of Riley's from this period are responses to free jazz and free improvisation: The Musicians The Instruments (poetry, The Many Press, 1978) and Company Week (prose, Compatible Recording and Publishing, 1994) in response to Bailey's 1977 Company Week event, and The Whole Band (Sesheta, 1972), in response to performances by John Tchicai's Cadentia Nova Danica. This habit of responding to music in his poetry has continued in more recent work, such as the Reader/Author/Lecture series (with poems for or after Syd Barrett
, Arnold Schoenberg
, John Sheppard
and others) and his more recent books concerning music encountered on his travels in Eastern Europe.
Riley was the subject of an essay collection, The Poetry of Peter Riley (The Gig, 1999/2000) and a poetry festschrift, April Eye (Infernal Methods, 2000).
Commenting on this work, American poet and Zukofsky
scholar Mark Scroggins offers this insight:
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
. Riley is known as a Cambridge poet, part of the group vaguely associated with J. H. Prynne
J. H. Prynne
Jeremy Halvard Prynne is a British poet closely associated with the British Poetry Revival.Prynne's early influences include Charles Olson and Donald Davie. His first book, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems was published in 1962; Prynne has excluded it from his canon...
which today is acknowledged as an important epicenter of innovative poetry in the United Kingdom. Riley was an editor and major contributor to The English Intelligencer
The English Intelligencer
The English Intelligencer was a literary magazine/newsletter founded and edited by the poets Andrew Crozier and Peter Riley. It played a key role in the emergence of many of the poets associated with the British Poetry Revival...
. He is the author of ten books of poetry, and many small-press booklets.
Overview
Born in StockportStockport
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...
, near Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, and raised in an environment of working people, Riley "entered higher education through Britain’s post-war socialistic educational policies". He read English at Cambridge University and has since lived and worked in the UK and abroad in teaching at several levels and other occupations. A Cambridge resident since 1985, and ran a mail-order poetry book business for almost twenty years. He has written studies of Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.-Life and work:...
, T. F. Powys
T. F. Powys
Theodore Francis Powys was a British novelist and short story writer, born in Shirley, Derbyshire on the 20 December, 1875, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys , vicar of Montacute, Somerset for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper. He came...
, improvised music, poetry, lead mines
Derbyshire lead mining history
This article details some of the history of lead mining in Derbyshire, England.- Background :On one of the walls in Wirksworth church is a crude stone carving, found nearby at Bonsall and placed in the church in the 1870s. Probably executed in Anglo-Saxon times, it shows a man carrying a kibble or...
, burial mounds, village carols
Carol (music)
A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character....
and Transylvanian string band
String band
A string band is an old-time music or jazz ensemble made up mainly or solely of string instruments. String bands were popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and are among the forerunners of modern country music and bluegrass.-String bands in old-time music:...
s, and has published two books of translations from the French poet Lorand Gaspar
Lorand Gaspar
Lorand Gaspar is a French poet.-Life:In 1943, he enrolled at Politehnica University of Bucharest in Engineering, was mobilized months later, and then imprisoned in a labor camp...
. He has been an advocate for neglected British poets from the 1930s and 1940s, in particular Nicholas Moore
Nicholas Moore
Nicholas Moore was an English poet, associated with the New Apocalyptics in the 1940s, who later dropped out of the literary world.Moore was born in Cambridge, England; his father was the philosopher G. E. Moore...
(1918-1986), and he has edited several posthumous books of Moore's.
Riley was the co-editor (with Andrew Crozier
Andrew Crozier
Andrew Thomas Knights Crozier was a poet associated with the British Poetry Revival.-Life:Crozier was educated at Dulwich College, and later Christ's College, Cambridge. His 1976 book Pleats won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, awarded jointly that year with Lee Harwood...
and others) of the important poetry/poetics journal The English Intelligencer (1965-1968), and editor of the later Collection (1968-1970). From the 1980s to the 2000s he ran the imprint Poetical Histories, which focussed on brief (4-12pp) pamphlets published on fine paper. Notable publications included J.H. Prynne's Marzipan and his sole poem in Chinese, Jie ban mi Shi Hu; R. F. Langley
R. F. Langley
Roger Francis Langley was an English poet and diarist. During his life, he was loosely affiliated with the Cambridge poetry scene.-Life and work:...
's Man Jack; and late work by the older poets Seán Rafferty
Seán Rafferty
Seán Rafferty was a Scottish poet, based in England from 1932 until his death...
and Dorian Cooke
Dorian Cooke
Dorian Cooke was a poet, MI6 operative, and head of the Yugoslav section at the BBC.-References:* The Times obituary, 11 October 2005* P. N. Review No. 168, March-April 2006...
.
In the 1970s Riley was an important early promoter of and advocate for British free improvisation
Free improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician involved. The term can refer to both a technique and as a recognizable genre in its own right....
, and the noted guitarist Derek Bailey was a lifelong friend; two of Bailey's late solo albums, Takes Fakes & Dead She Dances and Poetry and Playing, contain tracks of Bailey playing guitar while reading aloud from Riley's poetry. Several books of Riley's from this period are responses to free jazz and free improvisation: The Musicians The Instruments (poetry, The Many Press, 1978) and Company Week (prose, Compatible Recording and Publishing, 1994) in response to Bailey's 1977 Company Week event, and The Whole Band (Sesheta, 1972), in response to performances by John Tchicai's Cadentia Nova Danica. This habit of responding to music in his poetry has continued in more recent work, such as the Reader/Author/Lecture series (with poems for or after Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett , born Roger Keith Barrett, was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and painter, best remembered as a founding member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter during the band's psychedelic years, providing major musical and stylistic...
, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, John Sheppard
John Sheppard
John Sheppard was an English singer and composer.-Biography:In 1554 he supplicated, apparently unsuccessfully, for the degree of Doctor of Music at Oxford University, stating that he had studied music for 20 years and had "composed many songs"...
and others) and his more recent books concerning music encountered on his travels in Eastern Europe.
Riley was the subject of an essay collection, The Poetry of Peter Riley (The Gig, 1999/2000) and a poetry festschrift, April Eye (Infernal Methods, 2000).
Excavations & Riley's poetics
Distant Points is a series of prose poems arising from the author’s meditations on 19th century excavation reports of prehistoric burial mounds in the north of England. As Riley himself explains, this particular work is:Commenting on this work, American poet and Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...
scholar Mark Scroggins offers this insight:
Selected publications
- Love-Strife Machine (Ferry Press, 1969)
- The Linear Journal (Grosseteste Press, 1973)
- Lines on the Liver (Ferry Press, 1981)
- Tracks and Mineshafts (Grosseteste Press, 1983)
- Distant Points: Excavations Part One, Books One and Two (Reality Street Editions, 1995)
- Snow has Settled [… ] Bury Me Here (Shearsman Books, 1997)
- Passing Measures, Selected poems 1966-1996 (Carcanet, 2000)
- Messenger Street (Poetical Histories, 2001) note: this is a pamphlet containing four elegies for the poet Douglas OliverDouglas OliverDouglas Dunlop Oliver was a poet, novelist, editor, and educator. The author of more than a dozen works, Oliver came into poetry not as an academic but through a career in journalism, notably in Cambridge, Paris, and Coventry, before attending the University of Essex in the 1970s. He received a...
- The Dance at Mociu (Shearsman, 2003)
- Alstonefield: a poem (Carcanet, 2003)
Further reading
- Riley, Peter. "The Creative Moment of the Poem." In Poets on Writing: Britain, 1970-1991, ed. Denise Riley, 92-113. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1992.
- The Poetry of Peter Riley (The Gig: issue 4/5, Toronto: November 1999/March 2000) — devoted to studies of Riley’s poetry, plus an interview and bibliography. ISBN 0-9685294-4-5
- Keith Tuma, Fishing by Obstinate Isles: Modern and Postmodern British Poetry and American Readers. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern UP, 1998. (Contains an essay on Excavations.)
External links
- April Eye - Peter Riley's website
- Author Page at the British Electronic Poetry Centre
- Peter Riley in Conversation with Keith Tuma interview at Jacket Magazine website
- Mark Scroggins review of Distant Points
- Peter Riley's 'Excavations' reviewed at "Intercapillary Space"
- Peter Riley Feature at Poetica.net A search on the Homepage will link to poems, biography, and a dialogue between Peter Riley and Spilios Argyropoulos, The origins and trajectories of English avant garde poetry in the last 40 years