His poems are constructed snug and satisfyingly tight as stone cottages. Sometimes they come infused with a shiver similar to that experienced when you are walking away from a house you think is empty, and you look back and see a line of smoke rising from the chimney. In 'Little Hunger', he writes of looking for stone from ruins to build his own granite house. Murphy, whose main publisher has always been Faber, is not forthcoming as to why it is Gallery, rather than Faber, who are publishing the Collected. Yes, but Faber has an international name . . .
Every poet has certain poems that readers think of first.
With Murphy, it has to be 'The Cleggan Disaster' and 'Sailing to an Island'. It was cold and late October. The Cleggan Disaster' has resonances in literature beyond being Murphy's signature poem. The poem won the Cheltenham Prize in 1962, and one of the judges who chose it was Sylvia Plath. From a distance, she was beguiled by the west of Ireland sea-washed aura of that poem and others of Murphy's.