Remembering Richard Murphy

Anglo-Irish poet, memoirist and sailor Richard Murphy died at the end of January, aged 90. His work is not particularly well-known outside Ireland, but it is glorious in its evocation of twentieth-century Ireland, both urban and rural, its depictions of the beauty and trials of seafaring life, and the anxieties of the Anglo-Irish writer. In his sonnet sequence The Price of Stone, first published in 1985, he returned to the Shakespearean form -- both embracing and playing with the constraints and expectations of the sonnet form when others were moving towards freer models.

For Irish Studies Review I wrote about two recent re-issues of Murphy's work -- his memoir The Kick and his creative memoir In Search of Poetry, which details the writing process of The Price of Stone and includes some of the poems. You can access it here if you want to learn more about this remarkable poet and writer (the first 50 clicks get access to the full article). You can also read the Irish Times obituary of Murphy here.