sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

Poetry Friday: The Milkbar

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It’s supposed to be the middle of Spring here, but it sure feels like winter is here to stay – it is cold and wet and miserable. I long to be barefoot at the beach, soaking up some sun and even swimming, but that all seems so far away  as we’ve just finished our coldest September on record and October has continued the trend. So, feeling a bit miserable about this, I decided I needed to share a happy poem for today’s Poetry Friday. And the wintry weather has given me lots of photos to go with it, so I decided to record it. Here it is, The Milkbar.

Hopefully by next week I’ll be writing about Spring springing, but in the meantime. have a great Friday. The Poetry Friday roundup will be hosted by  Violet.

 

 

Poetry Friday: Yum!

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It’s Poetry Friday and I have just a quick post today, as I’m having a really busy week.
Last week while I was in Adelaide I bought myself two magnet sets, including boards and magnets, to add to my collection of magnetic words for inspiring and creating poetry. Earlier this week I posted the first poem I created using the sets. If you missed it, here it is:

Magnet Poem

When I got the set out today, I was attracted to the picture magnets and wondered if I could use some of them to inspire a rhyme. Here’s my effort, written in whiteboard marker:

Yum

And, when I looked back through my poems I came across this one written on my old, more staid whiteboard with some of my many other magnet words:Poetry

I look forward to creating lots more poems – simple and more complex – with my new toys.

 

Have a great Poetry Friday. This week’s roundup is hosted by Books 4 Learning. Head there to see links to more poetry goodness.

5 Minute Promo: Day 5

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Gosh. It’s Day 5 already. July is whizzing by. and, hopefully, if you’ve been following along, you’ve been busy spending a whopping 5 minutes of each day promoting your book(s).  If you haven’t, just twenty minutes (give or take a few) will bring you up to speed, ready to tackle day 5’s task which is (drumroll please)…

5 Minute Promo #5

Set up a Pinterest account. Yes, you’ve got it, I want you to join another social media platform. This is the last one, I promise (for now!). So, after you’ve read my few words, head over to Pinterest, sign up and you are ready to Pin. There’s simple instructions on how to get started here and instructions on how to set up a board and start pinning here. You might extend your five minutes and set up a board about your book. Here’s one I’ve set up for Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape here.

Already on Pinterest? Your five minute task is to make sure your profile and account is up to date and, once that’s done, use the rest of your time to pin two new pictures to one of your exitsing boards. Easy peasy. Feel free to follow me, Sally Murphy Author, while you are there.

Pinning is easy and fun. Here is a sample of things I’ve pinned from this site:

Read a kids Book

A quote with photo – and, of course, my web address so people know to visit me.

And:

Looking at You 3

A poem I wrote, added to a photo I took and again with my URL and twitter handle.

 

 

Poetry Friday: A Story Tree and a New Book

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It’s Friday which means it’s Poetry Friday, which is always exciting, but this particular Friday is extra exciting for me because it’s also the release day (book birthday!) of my latest book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. More on that in a bit.

First, though, a poem.  When I walk around the lake close to my house there is a lovely grove of paperbark trees in a swampy bit at the back of the lake. I often stop and admire the trees, and feel like they are watching me back. Paperbark trees are amazing, in that their bark really is like paper – and it sheds like rough cut pages. When I was a kid, I used to collect pieces and write on them.  Here’s a photo of one of the trees, which I took during a quick lunchtime walk this week – in between showers of rain, which made everything damp and shiny and heavenly-smelling.

paperbark

I came home and had to write about that tree. Here’s what I came up with:

 

The Story Tree

Hello tree

I wish I could read

the stories

etched deep

in your sepia paper.

Are they tales

of what you’ve seen

what you’ve heard

what you’ve felt

since you first drafted yourself

here in the swamp?

Or are they fables

of what you’ve imagined

might lie in other tree-libraries

in far flung places?

 

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy, 2016)

It’s kind of apt that this week’s poem is about stories because, as I said, today I’m celebrating the release of my latest book, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape.

Cover Sage Cookson 1

I just can’t enough of looking at the beautiful cover! This is the first in a series of  adventures, where Sage travels around Australia – and even overseas – with her parents, who are television chefs. Wherever they go, something always goes wrong, and Sage is at the center of fixing it. In Sweet Escape, the family visits a chocolatier who, it turns out, isn’t very pleased to see them.  So far the book has only been released in Australia, but it is available online here.

 

Have a great Friday. I know I’m going to. Today’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference.

Poetry Friday: All About the Books

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Recently I did my annual bookshelf tidy. Roughly once a year I tidy up by shelves, put everything back into alphabetic order, and give away books which don’t fit and which I’m finished with. It isn’t long, of course, before themy system starts to break down – in fact, if you look carefully, you can see that not all of my picture books fitted back in and so some are sitting on top. Oops.

Booshelves

One of my favourite poems about books is by Julia Donaldson and, coincidentally, someone shared it on Facebook yesterday, reminding me it would be a good fit for Poetry Friday. It begins:

I opened a book and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I’ve left my chair, my house, my road,
My town and my world behind me.

You can read the rest online here.

 

I also like the image Emily Dickinson provided, of a book being like a ship:

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry.

You can read the rest online here.

And, of course, even Dr Seuss has written about books:

Never too old

Do you have a favourite poem about books or about reading? I’d love to hear it.

Have a great Poetry Friday. The roundup today is hosted by  Random Noodling.

School Magazine: 100 Years

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It was great to find a big yellow envelope in my mail today. Inside were contributor copies of the latest Countdown Magazine, with my poem Kitten inside, illustrated by the amazing Matt Ottley.

School Mag

It’s always exciting to be included in one of the four School Magazines. I’ve posted before about the fact that School Mag is celebrating 100 Years of publication this year. When I was in Sydney recently I was able to help celebrate this event at the CBCA National Conference.

School Mag 2

Once again, happy birthday School Magazine!

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