Denise Riley is an English poet and philosopher who first began to publish in the 1970s. Her poem ‘Lyric’ is about the experience of writing poetry — the title refers to lyric poetry rather than a song lyric. The poet represents the process as one of struggle. The ‘lyric’ is something apart from the poet, and is difficult to lay hold of. Riley’s poem enacts the process through its constant presentation of paradox, odd line breaks and tortured syntax. She likens the experience at one point to being knotted up in a sheet.
Riley teaches creative writing and the history of ideas at the University of East Anglia. Her sequence of poems A Part Song was the winner of the 2012 Forward Poetry Prize. ‘Lyric’ is from Selected Poems (Reality Street, 2000).
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