Gerry Murphy

Gerry Murphy is an Irish poet.

Life and work Gerry Murphy was born in Cork City in 1952. His work is witty, openly intellectual and often satirical and is "highly, self-consciously literary". "Much of the most recent work displays intense absorption of the Roman classics either through direct reference or employment of the pithy epigram." at the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork.

Writing in The Irish Examiner about his 2010 book My Flirtation With International Socialism, poet Thomas McCarthy described him as "indisputably the doyen of the post-Galvin Cork generations, Murphy is a thrilling and provocative master of poetic monologue and social commentary. His habit is to be elliptical in politics, to insert a political jibe or universal truth as adroitly as an assassin’s knife". Fred Johnston, writing in Poetry Ireland Review, described Murphy's work as "catching the chink of light between the savagely political and the everyday".

Other poets cited as possible influences on Murphy's work include the American Charles Simic and the Romanian Marin Sorescu.

Publications

Collections A Small Fat Boy Walking Backwards (Cork, Commons Press, 1988, Three Spires Press, 1992) Rio de la Plata and All That (Dublin, Dedalus, 1993) The Empty Quarter (Dedalus, 1995) Extracts from the Lost Log Book of Christopher Columbus (Dedalus, 1999) Torso of an Ex-Girlfriend (Dedalus, 2002) End of Part One, New and Selected Poems (Dedalus, 2006) My Flirtation With International Socialism (Dedalus, 2010)

Translation His translation of the Polish poet Katarzyna Borun-Jagodzinska was published as Pocket Apocalypse (Cork, Southword Editions, 2005). Intermediary translator was Karolina Barski.