Description
Poetry. Sheila Murphy is “one of the strongest, clearest, and most distinctive voices writing in English today”–John M. Bennett. CONCENTRICITY is a daring and distinctive book, yet its playfulness never fails to shine through. “Sheila Murphy’s poetry operates in mercurial registers that demonstrate an aliveness to risk and experimentation. Murphy is argus-eyed, and her invigilation invokes a kind of spiritual exercise. She performs her poetic work as a meditative attention to the “tone complexion” of her language, which emerges in a “promenade of images” that open and transform in front of us. Sheila Murphy balances her quiet attention to the music of language with a sharp observation of the social text”–John Tritica.
Sheila E. Murphy (born 1951 in Mishawaka, Indiana) is an American text and visual poet who has been writing and publishing actively since 1978. She earned: B.A. degree (music/English) from Nazareth College, Kalamazoo, Michigan M.A. degree (English Language and Literature) from The University of Michigan Ph. D. degree (Educational Administration and Supervision, Emphasizing Community Education) from Arizona State University. With Beverly Carver, Murphy co-founded and coordinated the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series for twelve years. Murphy has engaged in a broad range of poetic styles over nearly three decades of writing and publication. She is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. Green Integer Press. 2003. Murphy was awarded the Hay(na)ku Poetry Book Prize from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland) in 2017 for her book Reporting Live from You Know Where. 2018. She currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Since 1986, the prose poem has been the form of choice for Murphy, who coined the term for a new kind of prose poem, the “American Haibun“, which is quite separate from the traditional Japanese form.
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy, includes an extensive list of books of poetry and anthologies, as well as visual poetry exhibitions.
William Slaughter –
Sheila Murphy’s prose poems “richly pay.” One comes to Concentricty “and takes strange gain away.”