Denise Riley |

Tapestry Room, Firth Hall, Western Bank, Sheffield . 7pm Thursday 15th March 2012.

Denise Riley (born 1948, Carlisle) is an English poet and philosopher who began to be published in the 1970s. Her poetry is remarkable for its paradoxical interrogation of selfhood within the lyric mode. Her critical writings on motherhood, women in history, identity, and philosophy of language, are recognised as an important contribution to Feminism and Contemporary Philosophy. She was, until recently, Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A. D. White Professor at Cornell University. She was formerly Writer in Residence at Tate Gallery London, and has held fellowships at Brown University and at Birkbeck, University of London.

More info: A.Piette@sheffield.ac.uk

This essay reflects on how perceptions of time may be altered after the sudden death of a child, and why inhabiting this sharply new temporality stops one’s habitual modes of telling. Neither tearful memoir nor testament of hope, the essay charts a vivid experience of such a suspended time and discovers an unsuspected intimacy between time and language. Although a life inside this ‘arrested’ time resists being described, it is neither exceptional or pathological; to outlive one’s child is historically common enough. But, because of this felt suspension of the usual flow of time which enables narration, it leaves few literary traces.

Published by Capsule Editions as an 80-page pocket book, this is the first in a series of stand-alone literary essays by leading contemporary thinkers and writers.

Order it here: http://capsuleeditions.com/denise-riley-time-lived-without-its-flow/

Denise Riley

Poetry Reading – Denise Riley

Denise Riley: Time Lived, Without Its Flow