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Cluster index: Peter Riley

Alistair Noon and the English sonnet.

Peter Riley: Noon brings this to poetry through his placement of the authorial self, you could say centrally but not subjectively – it is a perfectly objective attention to particulars as a means of attaching the whole (“the general makes me more specific” – Sonnet 1). Lyrical description is perhaps a good label for what Noon gets up to. The song qualities enhance the description and the description holds the singing to realities.

Poetry Prize Culture and the Aberdeen Angus.

Peter Riley: ‘The judging criteria, being tied to a system of familiarity and recurrence, are inevitably subjective and inevitably self-propagating. What chance is there of objectivity in an art where there is no common agreement as to what constitutes its qualities?

Denise Riley and the force of bereavement.

Peter Riley: In poems of four to fourteen lines, some of them sonnet-like, Denise Riley rails against the death imposed upon her, addresses the dead son, remembers, forgets, contemplates suicide, demands that he return home. All this is focused on the one condition of loss but in a range of poetical voices rich in self-detachment, irony and mock elegy, including subsumed quotations from well-known texts.

Poetry beyond the cults and enclaves.

Peter Riley: ‘There is of course an entire culture, with attached industries, eager to tell you that you are not alone in poetry and to make your choices for you. There are critics, festivals, prizes, courses, reading tours, institutional endorsements, etc., always ready to guide you firmly to “the best”.’