Passing Measures: Poems, 1966-1990

Peter Riley's work is translated into many languages. His poetry arises from places inhabited or visited (historical landscapes of central England, far west Wales, southern France, Tunisia, European urban centres), artifice (of music, Roman churches, Irish paintings) and inner experience. The momentum comes from an inhabitation of these places and the search for a finite construct from the individual lived moments. Riley is primarily interested in making a poetry which is "available" rather than "accessible". It is a poetry which offers the reader entry into an experience of the world mediated by the passionate needs of the shaping spirit, while seeking to avoid a reductive or confirming complicity.