sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Hello!

I'm Sally Murphy, an Australian author of over 40 children's books. I'm also the slightly crazy mother of six beautiful kids. You'll find bits of me buried somewhere in every one of my books. I love reading, writing, and speaking about reading and writing.

View my books or hire me to speak at your school, festival, or writers group.

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Poetry Friday: A Poetic Week

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It’s Poetry Friday but I feel, for me, it’s been poetry week: which is a wonderful thing indeed.

On Monday night I  spent a lovely couple of hours in Fremantle at Voicebox, a monthly open mic poetry night.  I’ve been hearing about Voicebox for years and planning to get along, especially since I started working back in the city, but this was my first time actually getting there. Very glad I did. There were two guest poets who read from their works:  Rajan Sharma, in Australia from the UK to perform at the Fringe festival, and Caitlin Maling,   a West Aussie poet who I already very much admired, but who is always a pleasure to hear from.    There were also 10 awesome volunteers for the open mic spots, so over the course of the night, we were treated to an incredible range of poets and poetic forms, and topics., as well as opportunities  to just chat poetry, and life, with fellow attendees.

Listening to poets who are writing for adults, and chatting poetry was an excellent precursor to the event I spoke at on Wednesday night. My awesome poet friend Rebecca Newman had asked  me to be  part of an event at the amazing  Paperbird Books, talking all things children’s poetry and reading from our work.  The event on Monday night had taken my thoughts back to an a question I keep coming back to: what makes a poem ‘for children’ or ‘for adults’? I spent far too much time during my doctoral studies trying to nail down an answer, so I went back again this week to revisit what I ended up writing.

The conclusion I made then, as now, is that while the question can’t be easily answered, a poem is for children either because an adult (poet, publisher, teacher) decides it is, based on their concept of childhood OR it is for children if children engage with it. I like the latter idea better, because it gives the child agency. For myself, when I write poetry I try not to talk TO children , nor even OF children, but AS a child, because that is who I really am. After all, adults and children are one and the same – we are on a continuum.  My favourite quote in trying to figure all this out is from Ted Hughes, who labelled writing children’s poetry “a curious occupation…the most curious thing being that we think children need a special kind of poetry”.

SO, Rebecca and I headed to Paperbird on Wednesday night, with a very enthusiastic, friendly audience, who listened to us talk about this curious occupation, and the experiences we have had both crafting poetry, and sharing it with children. We talked about the importance of letting children enjoy poetry – both the reading and the writing, and I suspect I used the word ‘pleasure’ at least a hundred times: pleasure is key when it comes to experiencing poetry.  What else did we talk about? The importance   of poetry in tough times, the joy of humorous poetry, rhyme, not rhyme… so much! Rebecca recorded our conversation, so we are hoping there might be some snippets to share at some point.

In the meantime,  as we discussed our work, we touched on Poetry Tag, the blog we used to run (I guess we still own it – we just kind of faded out of posting). The idea was that we took turns setting the other a handful of words which then had to be incorporated into a poem.  I went looking today for one of those poems, which I mentioned during Wednesday night’s chat. I remembered it as a really angry poem. When I  found it today I realised it probably wasn’t angry enough, because there are still refugee children being mistreated, just as they were in 2014 when I wrote this poem. Anyway, here is, along with the words Rebecca gave me back then:

SONG

I sing    

of a courageous tree

which struggles on

beside the sea

in spite of wind

and waves

and sand

perched

betwixt ocean and land.

 

I sing

of snail

that battles on

though winter’s rains

are so long gone

and shelters

waiting

in fragile shell.

How long

till rain

he cannot tell.

 

I sing

of you

embattled child

whose land

and life

have been defiled.

Who seeks new home

new hope

new place

Yet languish now

in no-man-s place.

 

I sing

to tell the world you’re there.

I sing

to let you know I care.

And like that tree

and like that snail

I sing in hopes

you will prevail.

 

I sing for you

young refugee

in hopes one day

you will be free.

(Copyright Sally Murphy 2014; 2020)

My conclusions from my week of poetry? We need angry poems. We need to write them and share them and act on them. We also need beautiful poems, hope-filled poems, sad poems, joyful poems, funny poems.   Thanks Voicebox, Paper Bird and Rebecca for making this a poetry week for me and others. And thanks to the Poetry Friday community for letting me be part of spreading poetry and its many messages.

Speaking of Poetry Friday – head over to the roundup hosted this  week by my fellow Aussie poet, Kat Apel,  who is    also, coincidentally, sharing a poem she wrote in 2014.

Hope your week is filled with poetry too!

Poetry Friday: Graffiti?

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It’s Friday, which means it’s Poetry Friday and, once this post is written, I will have managed to post every week this year! Of course I do realise it’s only week 3, but still a good sign that I’m going to do better this year).

First up, thanks to everyone who visited last week, when I hosted the weekly round up, and for all the lovely comments and messages of support for Australia. Like many Australians, I am blown away by the generosity coming from around the world –  not just in the form of donations, but also messages of solidarity and hope as well as so many statements urging leaders to wake up and take more drastic action to prevent climate change and start saving our planet.

Onto the poetry. This week I set the goal to write something – anything – every day, preferably before heading out the door to my dayjob. And I managed to write something everyday.  More pleasing, most of it was poetry, including progress on a verse novel I started before Christmas. Early days, but it’s just lovely to be creating.

On Monday, on my early morning walk, I spotted some words carved into the footpath – obviously done while the concrete was still wet. I snapped a photo and walked home pondering what would lead to someone carving those words there. More often you see initials, or paw prints or – and I love spotting these – the prints of leaves that have fallen onto the setting concrete.  I was so taken by these words that I didn’t even notice some spelling quirks (which is most unlike this teacher!).

So, when I sat down after breakfast to write,  it didn’t surprise me that my thoughts went back to that footpath. I wanted to explore not the meaning of the words, but the intention of the scribe.  Here’s what I came up with:

The poem reads:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Scribe

Wet concrete

Opportunity knocks

Chance to make my mark.

A footprint?

Too sticky.

A tag?

Don’t have one.

My name?

Asking for trouble.

Something to make people wonder?

I pause.

I breathe.

Grab a stick

And write.

(Copyright Sally Murphy, 2020)

It was only later that I remembered I had written on a similar topic before and went searching for those poems, first drafted on a visit to Rottnest Island (off the WA coast and home to the world-famous quokkas). I was there on a retreat with SCBWI pals, and on a sketch and scribble we stopped under this tree, which, from memory, may have been a young Moreton Bay Fig. I was drawn to the many names carved into the trunk and initially a bit cross that people would do this to a tree. That’s where this poem came from:

The poem reads:

The Name Tree

You are a thing of beauty

stretching grey-brown limbs skywards.

A testament to your will

to stand

against stiff sea-breezes

and salty spray.

But I don’t get why your trunk

must be scarred

by careless humans

wanting to leave a sign

that they were once here:

Ron + Therese

Sue

Hadly, Tony and

KC

all were here.

But now they’re not

and all that’s left of them

is their marks

scratched into your bark.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy)

After I’d written that I had a little longer to sit and think. At the time I was working on a collection of poetry with paired poems, each pair looking at the same topic from differing perspectives. So I started to wonder what the other perspective was here. And I started to think about why we have this urge to  leave our mark. Tony’s name was the most prominent, and I started to think of him as a small boy wanting to make a big mark, in the hope those who read it would imagine him as perhaps bigger, more accomplished than he saw himself. This was the result:

 

The poem reads:

The Tony Tree

I’m nobody

from nowhere special

no chance

that anyone will remember me

for anything in particular.

But perhaps

if I carve my name

in this trunk

then in years to come

someone will read it

and know I was here.

They will wonder

who Tony was

and where he was from

and what he was good at

and maybe

they’ll remember

the me I could have been.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy)

 

On another walk on Rottnest, this time alone, I came across some rocks on the shore where, again, people had been carving their names. I sat on one of these rocks and just breathed in the amazing view, but I couldn’t help but again wonder about the need to leave a mark. I had no urge, but my younger self probably would have, and I wondered what could justify needing to carve like that. What would someone crave that would really speak to future visitors? This is what I wrote:

The poem reads:

Grafitti

Why carve your name

on a rock

on an isolated beach,

leaving nature scarred for all days?

Will anyone,

stopping to view the scene,

care that

Tammy woz here

or that Max

found a stick

just right to gouge his name?

Will they want

to know who Lizzy was

and, if they do,

will they ever

learn the truth?

But, still,

I have the urge to carve

and so I do,

leaving my words for all to see:

Contemplate, while you can.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy)

I imagined some philosopher, wanting people to use those rocks to seize a few moments for quiet contemplation, but can also see now that that ‘while you can’ could also be a bit of a warning – ie contemplate this natural beauty while it’s still here.  And it’s only while I write this post that I wonder if my imagined philosopher was also the person who, years later, left those words in the path for me to see?

So I am poeming  once more – with new poems and reconnecting with older ones. – and this is good. Just in time, too, because this week I am having an ‘In Conversation’ with my amazing poet friend Rebecca Newman at Paperbird Bookshop in Fremantle. If you are nearby, drop by to hear us chat all things children’s poetry (or as much as we can fit into one session!). It’s a free event, to celebrate the end of Rebecca’s residency at Paperbird. You can book here.  And, if you are across the country or across the world, I’ll share some highlights next Poetry Friday.

Phew. What a long post. I’m sure you are itching to see what other poetry goodness has popped up around the blogosphere today. the roundup is over at Reading  to the Core, thanks to Catherine who is hosting this week.

Poetry Friday: The Roundup is Here!

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It’s Poetry Friday and not only is it time for me to share some poetry goodness, but I’m also hosting the Roundup today which means, at the end of this post you will find the links to all the poetry goodness offered by the rest of the PF community.

But before you rush off to tour the world wide web,  my own roundup of what I’ve been up to of late.

One of the small things I’m doing in my response to the horrible bushfire catastrophe still happening here in Australia, is to be part of the amazing #authorsforfireys auction happening on Twitter. There are so many amazing items being auctioned, with all proceeds going directly to the fire agencies and wildlife relief.  My small offering is an one-hour school visit – in person if in West Australia, or, via skype anywhere else in the world. The hour can be for a school, writers group etc, or even one on one for a consultation.  You can bid on this item or any of the other items by heading to Twitter until 11pm (AEST) tomorrow. Just search the hashtag #authorsforfireys. And, if you want to understand how the auction works there is a webpage to explain here.

I’ve also been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the last few weeks rereading some of my favourite verse novels. Along with staff from the National Centre of Australian Children’s Literature  and my talented friend Kathryn Apel    (who, incidentally, is also part of the #authorsforfireys auction) are compiling a bibliography of Australian verse novels for children and young adults.  We have managed to identify over fifty such books and been busily reading and annotating to create a resource for teachers, librarians, children’s literature lovers and, ultimately, to help get quality verse novels into the hands of young readers.

As a result, I have managed to reread the very  first verse novel I ever read – before I even knew of the term ‘verse novel’, It was Margaret Wild’s YA novel, Jinx . I am forever grateful that I discovered this novel and the form, starting a love affair which will last for the rest of my life. The bibliography will be available later this year, and we look forward to sharing it far and wide.

And, speaking of verse novels, I have also been busy planning how best to share my own new verse novel,  Worse Things, coming in May, with the world. So, as a tiny starting point, it’s time I reveal the cover of this new book baby here for the world to see. So, drumroll please – here its:

 

I am really delighted with what the amazing Sarah Davis has come up with for the cover – really different than my earlier verse novels, which is good, because so is what’s in between the covers. I really can’t wait to share more about this book, including some poetry, as the year goes by.

And some poetry for my post? I must confess that the poetry still isn’t flowing from my fingers, so I went digging through my files for something to recycle, and found this from a beach walk. i thought it apt because, even when poetry doesn’t flow, a walk in nature, especially on my beach, is always balm.

 

Thanks for dropping by, and now over to my Poetry Friday friends to let us know what they’ve been doing:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter


Poetry Friday: Not Much Poetry Here

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It’s Poetry  Friday and, like Carol, who is posting the weekly roundup today, one of my goals for the New Year is to participate more in this wonderful  sharing of poetry. And I even sat down to write a poem for today’s post.

But my country is on fire. And, while I did manage to write some lines on this fact, and my feelings, they are not fit to share here because they offer no hope. The poem was part sorrow, part anger at the man elected to run this country and the big interests which have for too long denied that our climate is changing and that action needs to be taken. I wanted my poem to end on a note of postitivity because, believe it or not, I am able to see some positives. The voices being raised by every day people to say ‘enough’, the  thousands of volunteers (and paid workers too) working to fight the fires, to try to keep people safe, to rescue animals, to put pressure on an inept Federal Government to do more,  these are all positives. But when I tried to put that into a poem they sounded like platitudes – and we have heard too many of those.

 

So instead, my non-poetic post is to say that there will be poetry on this blog and in our future. Sad poems, angry poems, and happy poems too. Because we need creativity now more than ever.

From my safe spot on the west coast, I will continue to write, and to live , and even to find joy. I will do what I can, when I can, for those affected by the fire, and for the country I love which will be suffering for a long time. And I will put my anger to good use to join in the calls for change, in Australia and around the world. We need to start treating our earth as the fragile thing it has always been.

Here is to a 2020 filled with poetry and with positive action. You can start with more poetry by visiting Carol’s Corner for the roundup of links. The Maya Angelou poem Carol is sharing is really appropriate at the moment – and always.

Oh, in the midst of my need to share my worries, I almost forgot that I did take the time this week to think about goals/resolutions for 2020. I wanted to come up with one word for the year, but ended up with several.

, poetry quote

Poetry Friday: First Swim

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It’s Friday which means it’s Poetry Friday.  The weather here has been summerish for weeks, even though Summer isn’t officially here till Sunday.  I love the warm, especially since it gives me an excuse to swim- beach or pool, doesn’t matter, I just love to swim.   But there is nothing like that very first outdoor swim for the season and this got me thinking about how, as a child, I would be so excited when the town swimming pool would finally open for the  season.  The anticipation of that first swim – and the joy of finally jumping in!   Here’s a little poem I wrote a while back to celebrate that memory – and, because I don’t have a photo to go with it, here’s one of my favourite photos of something a little bigger than me having a splash.

 

First Swim     

This whale tail is completely unrelated to all of my books, but it makes me smile.

Summer’s here

and I rejoice

to see the OPEN  sign outside the pool.

Blue water beckons

and once I’ve paid

I dump my towel and rush

to greet my old friend.

SPLASH!

Bliss bubbles and bibbles

as I plunge into icy depths.

 

(Poem and photo  copyright Sally Murphy)

The Poetry Friday roundup today is hosted by  Bridget. Pop by, check out the round up and be sure to wish Bridget a Happy Thanksgiving – she’s far from home as she celebrates.

 

 

 

Poetry Friday and an Email That Made Me Cry

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It’s Poetry Friday – a special day of the week but, unfortunately, one I have not had much time to take part in this year.  Life has been hectic -with  a full time day job at Curtin University in Perth, a new book (Bushfire) back  in February, a new verse novel  (Worse Things) scheduled for 2020, a month long residency in Canberra and, of course, lots of other things.

But I’ve been planning to get back to regular postings and an email this morning has given me the impetus.

The email, from a young reader named Ben, was short and sweet but gosh it mad me cry – in a good way. Ben took the time to email and tell me how much he loved my book 1915. It is, he tells me, his favourite book ever. And his favourite part? A poem called ‘Men Don’t Cry’.  I love that Ben especially liked this poem because, tome, it is the essence of the whole book.

 

See, the main character in the book, Stan, is a soldier,fighting at Gallipoli in WW1.  He’s just an ordinary man – a teacher from Bunbury, Western Australia, who has joined up to do what he sees as his duty but is, as so many young men were, confronted by the brutal reality of the war.  He finds himself thinking a lot about courage and bravery.One thing that helps him through is writing poetry and, in the book, we see some of those poems, including one written at a time when he is at his darkest. That a young reader read that poem and loved it means the world to me  and would to Stanley, too, I am sure.

So thanks Ben for your email, which has inspired me to share that poem here today and, at the same time,  jump back into Poetry Friday.

Men Don’t Cry   

Men don’t cry, or so I’ve heard

But here I sit and do

Because, dear friend this damned war

Has done its worst to you.

 

When we first met you made me laugh

You made me smile and more.

We became friends, we became mates

And together we marched to war.

 

Side by side we fought for months

And still you made me grin.

You were brave and tough, your mother’s son

Determined we would win.

 

When I was hurt you lifted me

And helped me toward aid.

That brave decision, sad to say

Was the last one that you made.

 

A shell blast took us both to ground

And you died a hero’s death.

Your only concern your mother dear

Her name on your last breath.

 

Men don’t cry, but if that’s so

Then no more man am I

As on your final resting place

I can only sit and cry.

 

(Sally Murphy, 2015)

 

I’m off to check out the rest of the Poetry Friday goodness which starts at Sloth Reads, where  Rebecca is hosting the round up, starting with a yummy salad poem.