How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
My high school education at St. Mary’s Academy in South Bend, Indiana was nothing short of outstanding. The English Department was fortunate to have very knowledgeable women teaching us literature. My proclivity for poetry emerged at that time, given exposure to a broad range of writers, Sexton, Plath, and many others. I began an arduous pursuit of contemporary poetry to read, visiting bookstores and libraries constantly. I was on the lookout for what I needed to be reading. Subsequent formal education at the undergraduate level at Nazareth College gave me plenty of opportunity to read the classics, specific single authors, as well as broaden my knowledge of Russian poetry. I often cooked up independent studies on such things as dictionary making, plus took summer courses in the English Romanic poets from a great professor at Indiana University South Bend. That experience brought such writers as Wordsworth to life for me, and to this day I celebrate "The first mild day of March," thinking of Dorothy Wordsworth's journals and her brother William's poems. By the time graduate school came along at Michigan, I was neck deep in Chaucer and spent a lot of time in the language lab reciting The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, a proficiency I love having acquired. I eagerly scooped up post-1945 writers to whom we were introduced for study, Levertov, Olson, Creeley, Wakoski, and many more, including, by the way, Bukowski. I tried writing, but had not quite captured a way to finish a poem. Oddly, in my doctoral program, I met Beverly Carver, a superior and gifted teacher in other fields. When she saw what I was seeking to do, she guided me through ways to complete a poem. That led to a raft of acceptances and drew me into the lane where I wanted to live my life.
How did publishing your first book change your writing? What have the differences been since?
Rupert Loydell of Stride Press invited me to submit a collection of what I have since called my American Haibun. The title of the book became With House Silence (Stride, 1987). This volume offered an excitement that paralleled the feeling I gained on the initial acceptance of my poems in Salt Lick in the early 1980s by editor James Haining, of Lucky Heart Books, originally in Quincy, Illinois.
Directly to your question, the confirmation that the publication of my first book prompted me to write more freely in the form I came to term “American Haibun”, in which I continue to find much to explore, including some occasionally quirkier pieces, more advanced in language. I sought to retain a pure, plain use of language I hoped would transcend itself. In addition, I took on other forms as well as additional free-verse work. The publication of this book represented an important validation of my work.
How does a poem begin?
I'm often in an alpha state that takes in what is around me or pulls from the recesses of my mind some impulse to hear a poem as though it already existed (which I suspect it has). I feel like a medium or a translator who captures something and then renders it as faithfully as I can. That's only a fraction of the story. I know rationally that I play a role in shaping the poem, but it makes sense to me that this is as Michelangelo declared when speaking about creating the statue of David, "It's easy. You just chip away at the stone that doesn't look like David." That's very much like my poetic process.
Do you see your work as a single, extended project, or a series of threads that occasionally weave together to form something else?
Both. Some works are themselves extended projects, while others involve separate poems. There are always connections among small and large works, some of them conscious, while others emerge in my awareness.
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I used to perform a rather ornate act of juggling multiple responsibilities, and I liked that. It made for a different kind of inspiration. Today my mindset is the same, regardless of the number and type of projects around me. Throughout my writing life, I have devoted swaths of time to working on a particular writing project, sometimes a sequence or gathering of one type of work, often with numerical requirements I created myself. Currently, I mix it up. I do a great number of syllabic projects, using existing forms or discovering new ones. I try not to leave behind the occasional short piece I feel I must write.
As a true night person turned morning person (a fake morning person, if you will), I find the edges of the 24-hour cycle most appealing, in other words, early morning and late night. These seem to draw out unconscious discoveries, and I enjoy the flow of that. For now, it's often early morning, but I don't restrict myself to that period. Suffice it to say that I write every day.
What are your favourite print or online literary journals?
I read oodles of journals, and I like many. I will share several that I believe make valuable contributions. The Passionfruit Review focuses on love and the human heart. New Croton Review is a journal very much worth it. Tears in the Fence, long published by David Caddy, offers a range of different styles and is a deeply thoughtful and accomplished journal. Abbey, edited by David Greisman, has been around for decades and features not only poetry, but includes cartoons by the gifted Wayne Hogan. The poems therein feel genuine and clear. E.Ratio, edited by Gregory Vincent St, Thomasino, is an adventurous and intriguing publication. Posit, edited by Susan Lewis is a wonderful journal, inclusive of innovative work.
Who are some of the artists you have engaged with lately that most excite you?
I'm going to suggest some recently discovered writers: Heikki Huotari and H.L.Hix are two of these. I tend to love the philosophical direction some works take. Likewise, the influence of mathematics. That would explain these two. I have written elsewhere of my admiration of Diane Seuss, the real thing. Last year I turned my proclivity toward forms to Jericho Brown's Duplex form, which is enjoyable to read and enjoyable to write.
Interesting, last night, just to make myself happy, I began to read Gertrude Stein's America, edited by Gilbert A. Harrison. This was not an arbitrary grab from my shelf of all things Stein. I needed to read a jubilant view of America and Americans. Today, I'm still smiling and hoping for a justifiable return to that joy. Feeling the movement of Gertrude Stein's beautiful mind helps me realize in a myriad of ways the potential each of us has. It encourages me to keep that thought front and center. As a side benefit, I happened upon a glorious bookmark I placed in the Stein volume of the Scarlet Robin by the Australian wildlife artist, Jeremy Boot. This bookmark and matching stationery were gifted me by my now deceased dear friend Fay McManus. I have celebrated birds in whole new ways, given Jeremy Boot's art.
Visual
artists such as David Chorlton and Rupert Loydell, both accomplished poets,
also, offer me great inspiration. So with musical compositions. When I studied
music theory and history, I grew enamored of the early and mid-Twentieth
Century composers, including Berg, whose sonata for violin broke the usual
barriers of dryness one associates with 12-tone music, which I love. I listen
to poets quite often, and when I do, whole new worlds erupt in my psyche. There
are many channels of inspiration, and for me it seems an embarrassment of
riches.
Sheila E. Murphy. Appeared or forthcoming in Verse Daily, Lana Turner, Fortnightly Review, Poetry, Hanging Loose, and others. Recent book publications: Escritoire (Lavender Ink, 2025), Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Gertrude Stein Poetry Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Hay(ha)ku Book Prize for Reporting Live From You Know Where (Meritage Press, 2018). She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy
She has work in the fourteenth issue.