Rich Murphy's Biography

Rich Murphy was born in Lynn, Massachusetts and has taught writing and literature for 23 years at Bradford College, Emmanuel College and now at Virginia Commonwealth University. His collection of poems titled, Voyeur, was the 2008 Gival Press Poetry Award winner and will be out in October. Credits include two books of poems The Apple in the Monkey Tree by Codhill Press and Phoems for Mobile Vices by BlazeVox; chapbooks Great Grandfather by Pudding House Publications, Family Secret by Finishing Line Press, and Hunting and Pecking by Ahadada Press; poems in hundreds of journals; and essays in refereed journals, including Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics Poetry / Literature and Culture and Journal of Ecocriticism. Regarding his poetry Derek Walcott has written, “Mr. Murphy is a very careful craftsman in his work, a patient and testing intelligence, one of those writers who knows precisely what he wants his style to achieve. His poetry is quiet but packed, carefully wrought, not surrealistically wild, and its range not limited but deliberately narrow. It takes aim.”