Collected Poems 1952-2000

by Richard Murphy

Richard Murphy emerged in the 1950s with John Montague and Thomas Kinsella as one of the three major poets in the new Irish poetic renaissance. His second volume Sailing to an Island, which was a Poetry Book Society Choice, was followed by The Battle of Aughrim, widely acclaimed as one of the most powerful historical narratives of the twentieth century. Although the next volumes range from his signature setting of the grey stone and surging sea of Ireland’s western islands to vivid Eastern settings, they offer a renewed lyricism, in the poignant narrative and descriptive poems of High Island, the colorful psychological portrayals of childhood in Ceylon, and the sonnet sequence that comprises The Price of Stone. Playfully and candidly, this later work gives voice to structures as varied as Kylemore Castle, a tinker’s wattle tent, Nelson’s Pillar, and a beehive cell in which a woman gives birth alone on High Island. The Collected Poems is a major achievement, not only because on page after page it reveals poetry of exceptional insight and passion, but also because it brings into focus the wide poetic range—geographical, formal, and tonal—of which Richard Murphy is master.

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Richard Murphy was one of Ireland’s most distinguished poets. He is particularly known for poems that draw on the landscape and history of the west of Ireland. His Collected Poems (Gallery Press) was published in 2000, his acclaimed autobiography The Kick (Granta Books) in 2003. His awards include the Cheltenham Award and the American-Irish Foundation Award.

‘Richard Murphy’s verse is classical in a way that demonstrates what the classical strengths really are. It combines a high music with simplicity, force and directness in dealing with the world of action. He has the gift of epic objectivity: behind his poems we feel not the assertion of his personality, but the actuality of events, the facts and sufferings of history’ (Ted Hughes).

Source: http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SeamusHe...