Sheila E. Murphy’s most recent book publications include Concentricity (Pleasure Boat Studio, a Literary Press, 2004), Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer, 2003, winner of the 2001 Gertrude Stein Award). She is the author of twelve full-length book publications. Forthcoming is Proof of Silhouettes (Stride). Her work has been anthologized widely, including collections from Sun & Moon, Talisman House, and Stride Publications, among others. Murphy has performed her work widely, appearing as a guest performer at the 1999 Brisbane Writers Festival in Queensland, Australia, attended by some 27,000 enthusiasts of literature. In addition, Murphy was in residence at the Arvon Foundation in Devon, England, for a week in 2000, where she provided a series of workshops for writers and delivered guest lectures and readings. She served a residency with Chax Press in Tucson in 1990. Murphy’s work is archived in The Avant Writing Collection in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection of The Ohio State University Libraries. The Collection focuses on poets and writers born in the late 1930's through the 1970’s. Her home is in Phoenix, where she and Beverly Carver co-founded and coordinated for twelve years the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series. Trained as a musician, Murphy has been actively engaged over the past several years creating digital art. Buy her books here. See some work here, here, here and here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? I cannot remember a first. I have read poetry all my life. During the early 1980s I participated in a group where each of us memorized a poem by someone else and delivered it at the next meeting. I memorized “The Abnormal Is Not Courage” by Jack Gilbert and “The Incognito Lounge” by Denis Johnson. Something happens when one memorizes something. I’m sure that is one of many reasons that many writers choose to deliver their work page-free. A new force is with the work. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? Some of what comes next certainly may fall loosely into the category of “literary.” I’ll mention anyway. My current obsession is with presidential biographies (presently reading Edmund Wilson on Theodore Roosevelt), following my completion of one pre- and one post- president (Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton). David McCullough’s work, notably the John Adams and the Harry Truman biographies, drew me into this area, and I’ve been at it now for quite a while, book after book. This follows from some undergraduate work I did on Thomas Merton, as part of a senior seminar on biography, when, as a junior, I focused on this author and wrote about Merton as an “active contemplative.” These days, I read a lot in economics, and find finance, also, to be stimulating. That’s gone on for a good period of time. I read a bit of science, notably physics, and find certain mathematics texts stimulating. I also read a good deal of art criticism, music theory, and related, based upon lifelong pursuits in these areas. I maintain an active working knowledge of organizational literature, as well as research and program evaluation literature, based upon my earnings work in these arenas. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? I was about a whisker away from a minor in philosophy during my undergraduate studies, and have always immersed myself in this field. Philosophy is at the core of at least one type of thinking. Pure thought surely relates to poetry. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Recently, I find myself drawn yet again to several early Chinese poets, including Ch'an Buddhist poet monks, available in translation from Bill Porter (Red Pine) and Mike O’Connor. I have always read the work of contemplatives in several cultures. I believe that the purest and most conscious forms of living represent crystalline influences on the living and being of the human community. 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? Yes. I read poetry quite widely and in large doses. The practice is so well integrated into my life that I think nothing of it. Reading is vital to writing anyway, I believe, in that it is a part of the process of opening possibilities in writing. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? These days, such breadth exists in available reading material that I doubt that anyone would presuppose a particular text or author as a staple for “one and all.” For this reason, it is difficult to answer this question. Everything that I’m aware of that I want to read is placed on the list (actual or virtual). The list is long. If I think I would benefit from something (versus the piece as a “must”), I read it (eventually). Any outside dictatorial influences need to be prepared to defend their placement of required reading lists on the heads of other readers! Each of us is independent and can benefit from being in a perpetual “antenna” state for the right reasons, not just in a genuflective mode. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? “Think of your favorite words. Think of words do you not like. What happens if you put them together to help me imagine something that you want me to think about.” 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? I believe in roles (very plural) for poets (very plural). I believe that there are opportunities galore for people who have poetry in their being to bring to culture. For some writers, an activist role is appropriate and natural. For others, a refined practice that is apparently interior is making an unseen, but certainly a felt contribution to the human community. I have long believed that contemplative practice by devoted ones is what keeps us all afloat, by contributing its measure of purity to an otherwise polluted state of living. I believe that there is great humility available to a poet, and with that, some very beautiful living that perhaps helps interest others in the texts. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**tart Chiseled**face I**thou Of**for Form**content 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? The text is occasionally the closest thing I have to the body. Yesterday the word “oxygen” appeared, within range of hearing neighbors outside, touched by heat of the day. Perhaps it’s best to say the text and the body run on parallel tracks, or that one is a harmonic to the other. A homeopathic remedy in text articulates the body’s full dimensions.