Weighing in at around 1,200 pages, this is a lifetime’s work, from long poems to short lyrics, from sequential poems of place, to poems documenting Peter Riley’s interest in the historical and pre-historical, to poems of psychological and philosophical depths. It’s a daunting task to read even a fraction of these works, and I can’t say I have entirely got to the bottom of it, or if I ever will.

There is difficulty here: the kind that I suppose might be called “elitist” by some; but it’s a difficulty worth persevering with. Riley's long sequence, Excavations, uses the findings of archaeological digs into prehistoric tombs in Derbyshire as a device for the idea of remembrance, the deep song of unspoken lives long forgotten, all that is left of them being bones and a few artefacts and remains of old songs. Written in prose paragraphs, it doesn’t explain itself exactly, but neither does it boast about its esoteric knowledge. Here’s a short extract:

 

 

And this is so clearly nothing (nothing left and nothing else) bury it well and heap a mound over it, to prevent it escaping. But a smaller mound, for it is really nothing. So the rest side by side/grey and grey. Hope strikes and holds, at the fancy edge to any known limit, the waste that stays | Small clouds scatter sky clears above sheds and light fills empty bottles.

 

“The landscape is a thought thing,/ it has been thought as a gift and as a burden” could be a way into these works.

Another way might be to say that they are written at the pace of walking. The poet walks the hills, through cities (including Manchester), through landscapes as close as Derbyshire, as north Wales, and as far away as Romania and Italy. He thinks as he walks, and all his reading in history, geography and all kinds of literature come into his thoughts and become threads followed, paths through disparate ideas and feelings.

A lot of the longer poems and prose poems seem almost impossible to quote from. There are lots of stunning lines and images throughout both volumes, but how do you describe a long poem like ‘Due North’ in a shortish review? It is set in Manchester, incorporates such events as the Kinder Scout Trespass and deals with Manchester’s history of radicalism and poverty, as well as incorporating old songs, lines from AE Housman and other bits of history and geography. Here is a short extract, that can do no more than give a brief glimpse into the deep well of thought out of which it comes:

 

Walking along brief streets of house rows

deep and clear autumn sunlight between cloud masses

all the fair faces in the rooms and their abandoned destinations

                with no hope of repair

betrayed workers, paid up and forgotten,

their language vilified, the plain speech we offer the world in

all honesty described as “a source of evil” by

      priest academics chanting etymological curses

while the world bears its own evidence on rays of sunlight

                                                all along the rows of dancers.

 

Due North and Excavations are themselves among the reasons why I enjoy this writer so much; they are probably among the best long poems of the last 50 years. He mixes deep thought with deep feeling all throughout these two collections. He doesn’t really like the term “experimental”, finding it I think very divisive; but his poetry is “experimental” at its very best. Both volumes are full of poems that experiment with form, as if each poem or sequence has to find its own new way of being written, because the old forms won’t quite do. His lyrics are stunningly realised jewels of thought and feeling, and his longer poems spin very broad cloths of imagery that stay with the reader and change your perspective on life.

Now, this is all very well; but of course this poetry still remains challenging and difficult, especially if the poetry you’re mostly exposed to is found in slams, or open mic evenings, or even in the pages of a lot of slim volumes. Twelve hundred pages of poetry is also a lot to read for most people, and the price of each volume is a lot to fork out for most people. I’m always aware that as a reviewer, I have the privilege of being able to read these books for the price of a few hundred words. But it’s also a real pleasure to know that there are poets in the world with such wide ambition as Peter Riley, who are not afraid of big ideas and difficulty. I fully accept that not everyone will want to take the effort of reading Peter Riley’s work; but should you take up that challenge I would say it is more than worth it. Like climbing Everest, the views when you get there are stunning.

Lastly, I want to say that among our senior poets, Peter Riley is among the best.

 

Peter Riley, Collected Poems, Vol 1, Shearsman, £19.95

Peter Riley, Collected Poems, Vol 2, Shearsman, £19.95