F. T. Prince Memorial Lecture 2026 - Denise Riley: Does The Poem Think?

The University of Southampton is pleased to welcome Denise Riley as the guest speaker for this year's F.

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Prince Memorial Lecture.Denise Riley is one of the most important poets at work in the English language.“On skulls, poems, bones, and spirits.The poets invoked will included Byron, Wordsworth, and a number of twentieth century and contemporary authors.”She will be in conversation with Toby Litt, Associate Professor in Creative Writing.Denise Riley was born in 1948 and lives in London.

She previously taught at the University of East Anglia.

Her prose books include 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), The Force of Language (with Jean-Jacques Lecercle; 2004), Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2005), Time Lived, Without Its Flow (2012; revised edition 2019) and A Chorus of Ears: On the ‘Voice of the Poem’, 2026.

Her poetry collections include Marxism for Infants (1977), Dry Air (1985), Mop Mop Georgette (1993), Penguin Modern Poets series 2, vol 10 (with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair; 1996), Selected Poems (2000, revised 2019), Say Something Back (2016), Penguin Modern Poets series 3, vol 6 (with Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine; 2017), Lurex (2022)Th annual F.

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Prince Memorial Lecture series takes place in honour of the poet and scholar F.

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Prince, who was one of Southampton's first English professors.

Invited speakers explore new directions in literary studies, drawing on the English department's wide range of intellectual interests.This event is co-organised with the Winchester Poetry Festival.If you have any questions about this event please contact fahevent@soton.ac.uk.