Peter Riley was born in 1940 near Manchester in an environment of working people. He studied at Pembroke College Cambridge and the Universities of Keele and Sussex. He has taught at the University of Odense (Denmark) but since 1975 has lived as a freelance writer, English teacher and bookseller. He lived for ten years in the Peak District of central England, and has lived in Cambridge since1985, where he has run a small press and collaborated in organising international poetry events. Some of his recent writings have resulted from his travels, principally to Transylvania in search of music, but also to France and Greece. Of some twenty books and pamphlets 1968-2006, the principal in-print items are: Passing Measures [a selection], Carcanet Press 2000; Alstonefield [a long poem], Carcanet Press 2003;  Excavations [prose poems], Reality Street Editions 2004; A Map of Faring, Parlor Press (U.S.A.) 2005; The Dance at Mociu [Transylvanian travel sketches], Shearsman Books 2003; The Llyn Writings, and The Day’s Final Balance (uncollected writings 1968-2006), are both forthcoming from Shearsman Books, 2006/7.