This essay surveys the work of Denise Riley (b. 1948) from roughly 1975-1985, paying close attention to the formal textures of her prose and poetry alongside the political and personal contexts that occasioned these writings and the ways in which Riley intervened in them. The aim is twofold: firstly, to provide an adequate account of the interconnections between Riley's prose, poetry, and political work, which has not been done adequately to date; secondly, to situate this portrait in terms of the social stakes of literary, anti-capitalist, and feminist politics and pedagogies. Read together, her early prose and poetry trace what she calls a "socialized biology" at the heart of poetic and political language. Riley's work provides strategies for interrupting the traditional view of poetry as pre-political moral training
