PressPress Lizz Murphy

Shebird

A6 40pp ISBN 978-0-9873057-5-6

(cover photograph: Chris Mansell)

$9.90 including postage

Shebird is the woman or girl who wears the shroud of widows, guards the new grave, tastes gun, is paid two dollars a day or not paid at all. She is the child factory worker, the blackbird changing shadows, or the poet pondering black dogs and ravens or becoming the fox with mist on her breath.

In just a few words or lines Lizz Murphy cuts to the quick of a social issue or vividly captures a passing moment.

This is Lizz Murphy’s eighth poetry title and her third PressPress collection of micropoetry. She has also published five anthologies. and is widely published inter/nationally.

Sample poems from Shebird:

BONE

Greenwell Point NSW

The pelicans are in command

live the bones of this place

its deep vein its deep ear

allow us to pause a moment

swallow their salt

revigorate our own bleak bone

CHOCOLATE FIX

I am a slave to the cocoa bean

So too the children who harvest it

Portraits

A6 32pp ISBN 978-0-9808656-9-1

$9.90 including postage

What Lizz Murphy says about Portraits

Before I focused on poetry, I worked with oils, acrylics and mixed media. Always a keen sketcher, counsel from Delacroix sticks in my mind – something about being able to draw a man jumping from a fourth storey window before he meets the ground. My new PressPress collection, Portraits is a series of quick sketches mainly from life in the street. The poems are inspired by my painting days and in some cases drawn from images of that time. I love ironic framing when it happens and my attention is frequently caught by the hard knock of life I see around me.

I began my writing with pinch-size poems and found that people liked them and wanted to publish them. They were often moments seen through a bus window, a haiku-inspired blink of nature, a juxtaposition of images which entertained me or some terse thought. ‘Terse’ was a common response. I liked it. My influences included Dada and haiku.

I’ve been drawn back to the small poem - pressures of time (although a small poem can take as long to surface as a ‘large’ poem), finding ways to work with a growing pile of raw material, an interest in art & text (small poems lending themselves to this) and a hankering to revisit those beginnings nudged by one of the recent poetry trends, the micro poem.

The small poem can be a flashing wing, a story in a heartbeat, a scrap of the living, a satirical stir. It is a punch in a line (or two or a few); a small disturbance. I like it

Six Hundred Dollars

A6 32pp ISBN 978-0-9807718-0-0

$9.90 including postage

Sample poems from Six Hundred Dollars:

ROADSIDE COLLECTION

The shock of used mattresses

Like knickers skid-side up

$600

Here for $600 you can buy

a purebred Siberian husky pup

a digital display microwave

a proheat all rounder vacuum