A Chorus of Ears
On 'the voice of the poem'
Will be published approx. on 25. June 2026
Book
Hardback
144 pages
978-1-0350-9596-4 (ISBN)
Description
'One of the most eloquent thinkers about our life in language' - The Sunday Times
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
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
Reviews / Votes
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 <i>Elizabeth Bishop: Lines of Connection</i> 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 * One of the most eloquent thinkers about our life in language * The Sunday Times * Wondrous . . . one of the great poets of our time * New Statesman *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pan Macmillan
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Laminated cover
Dimensions
Height: 178 mm
Width: 111 mm
Thickness: 5 mm
Weight
81 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-0350-9596-4 (9781035095964)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
approx. 06/2026
Picador
€18.49
Available for download
Person
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).