Denise Riley (born 1948, Carlisle) is an English poet and philosopher.

Life

Riley lives in London. She was educated for a year at Somerville College, Oxford, and graduated from New Hall, Cambridge. She was, until recently, Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A. D. White Professor-at-large at Cornell University. Her visiting positions also included a writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery in London and visiting fellow at Birkbeck College in the University of London. She was formerly a Writer in Residence at Tate Gallery London, and has held fellowships at Brown University and at Birkbeck, University of London. Among her poetry publications are Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair (1996).

Work

Her poetry interrogates self-hood within the lyrical mode. Her critical writings are on motherhood, women in history, "identity", and philosophy of language. Her poetry collections include Marxism for Infants (1977); the volume No Fee (1979), with Wendy Mulford; Dry Air (1985); Stair Spirit (1992); Mop Mop Georgette (1993); Selected Poems (2000); Say Something Back (2016), which was nominated for a Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection; and Lurex (2022). Riley’s non-fiction prose includes 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); and Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2005).

Awards and honors