Day and night the sky arches over
Hills and plain turning against
The earth, clouds springing
From the dark wooded edge fan
Over the farmed land and at
Night the plethora of stars
Turns clear and sure and
Compact in their terraces
Above a veiled and separated ground
O fine in their farming the stars
Rally and exit all night.


from 'Roofwatch'
             

Peter Riley's Passing Measures offers an opportunity to take stock of the work he has published over the last thirty years. His poetry arises from places inhabited or visited (historical landscapes of central England, far west Wales, southern France, Tunisia, European urban centres), from art and things man made (music, Roman churches, Irish paintings) and inner experience.

He is chiefly interested in making a poetry which is 'available' rather than 'accessible'. The poem 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. 'I look upon myself,' he says, 'as writing in the central tradition of poetry in English, especially with regard to the "wrought" or "aureate" text, my version of which is essentially a meditative construct concerning individual experience in place and time, reaching into an ethic of care.'