Synopsis
‘She’s one of the best poets around’ – Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
Part poetry collection, part consolation, Say Something Back and Time Lived, Without Its Flow collects Denise Riley’s moving documents of loss and grief together for the first time.
Rocked by the horrific experience of maternal grief, Denise Riley wrote the much-celebrated Say Something Back, in which the poet-philosopher contemplates the natural world and physical law, and considers what it means to invoke those who are absent. These are poems which expand our sense of human speech and what it can mean, of what is drawn forth from us when we address our dead.
These lyric poems and elegies are accompanied by the beautiful, unflinching Time Lived, Without Its Flow. Diary entries written after receiving news of her adult son’s death are woven into a life portrait of loss. A ruminative post-script to these diaries follows, in which Riley examines the experience with a philosopher’s precision, mapping through it a literature of consolation.
Published in a single volume for the first time, Say Something Back and Time Lived, Without Its Flow offers with remarkable grace and insight kind counsel to all those living in the wake of grief.
Details
06 March 2025
9781035061105Reviews
She’s one of the best poets aroundAndrew Motion, former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
It sometimes seems that contemporary poetry divides into two sorts - those poems that did not need to be written and those written out of necessity. Denise Riley belongs to the second category - her writing is perfectly weighted, justifies its existence. It is impossible not to want to "say something back" to each of her poems in recognition of their outstanding quality. Her voice is strong and beautiful - an imperative in itself . . . remarkableGuardian
The best thing I've read in agesMax Porter, author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
Denise Riley’s Say Something Back shows how grief keeps a different clock and is a churning yet exhilarating (because the poems are so good) exploration of loss. Her poetry gets to the heartJackie Kay, Guardian
