About Lizz Murphy

Lizz Murphy has read her poetry in cafés and courthouses, feasts and festivals, schools and sculleries. Lizz was born in Belfast but has lived in Australia for a long time. She moved to the bush (Binalong NSW) over forty years ago for fresh air and country schools and before long found herself commuting to Canberra for work and writing on buses (you have to be fast). She continues to share her time between Binalong, neighbouring regions and Canberra enjoying a strong relationship with poetry and arts communities on both sides of the border and making poems in both places. She has worked in publishing, arts marketing, arts and poetry development, community arts and the media (but not in that order). She has facilitated creative writing workshops from Nowra NSW to Nhulunbuy NT and has been The Canberra Times Poetry Editor.

Lizz Murphy has published fourteen books.  The Wear of my Face (Spinifex Press, 2021) is her ninth poetry title. Some titles are full collections, some not so full. Shebird (PressPress) was released in 2016, Portraits: 54 Poems (PressPress) in 2013 and Six Hundred Dollars (PressPress) in 2010. Her other collections are: Walk the Wildly (Picaro Press; re-released Ginninderra Press/Picaro 2017), Stop Your Cryin (Island Press), Two Lips Went Shopping (Spinifex Press, print and e-book), Pearls and Bullets (Island Press) and Do Fish Get Seasick (Polonius Press). Her five anthologies and community publications include Wee Girls: Women Writing from an Irish Perspective (editor, Spinifex Press) and the social history The Pearly Griffin: The Story of the Old Griffin Centre (co-editor with Sarah St Vincent Welch, ACT DHCS). She is widely published in Australia and has poems published in Canada, China, England, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland and USA and translated into Bengali, Chinese, French, Gaelic, Polish and Serbian.

Before poetry Lizz used to paint. Now she occasionally works with art & text. She held a solo exhibition of small works Piece of Place locally, in conjunction with Finding your Way Home by Kate O'Connor, November 2022. In 2018 she instigated Postcards from the Sky. This began as a short program of living studios at Belconnen Arts Centre ACT, resulted quite unexpectedly in a group exhibition (10 artists/writers) Feb-March 2019, and continues as an arts collective. In 2011 she was in a group exhibition titled Skin with three other artists: Kelly De Olivera, Deborah Faeyrglenn and Cheryl Jobsz at ANCA Gallery, Canberra. In 2005 (with both Deborah Faeyrglenn and Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello) and 2006 (with Suzette Boddington) she had collaborative art & text works shown in group exhibitions at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery.

Lizz instigated and coordinated the poetry-based public art program Poetry: The Indelible Stencil in partnership with Southern Tablelands Arts (STA) and eight local governments. A team of ten regional poets were commissioned in 2010 to write micro poems. Selected works were cut into large steel panels and installed across the arts region. You can see photos and learn more about the project and the poets here.

Lizz always wanted to fly in a helicopter and to go to Darwin. She got to do both through Northern Territory Writers Week 2001. One day she'd like to go back there. Other festivals include Adelaide Fringe, Shoalhaven Poetry Festival, Spring Poetry Festival Canberra, Weereewa Festival and the Australian Poetry Festival. She was a featured poet in the fabulous Tasmanian Poetry Festival (Launceston) in 2014. Other places poetry has taken her include SE NSW with the Poets in Court tour 2001 (performer and coordinator), Broken Hill to Katoomba - Poets on Wheels 2003 (Poets Union) and Kolkata/Calcutta - Australia-India Poetry Exchange 2006 and 2007. 

Lizz Murphy's latest collection of poetry, The Wear of My Face (Spinifex Press) won the 2021 ACT Writers Notable Awar (Poetry - Big Press). She is the co-winner of the 2011 Rosemary Dobson Poetry Prize. She won the Anutech Poetry Prize 1994 and the ACT Creative Arts Fellowship for Literature 1998. She was Highly Commended in the 2013 Blake Poetry Prize, a finalist in the UK's 2013 and 2014 Aesthetica Writing Competitions (Poetry), gained a committee mention in the Max Harris Poetry Prize 2008. Other awards include an artsACT Travel Grant and a CAPO Singapore Airlines Travel Award to visit India in 2006 and 2007.

Memberships: ACT Writers Centre, now known as Marion, Australian Poetry Ltd, STARTS, Binalong Arts Group Inc (BAG).

For A Poet’s Slant visit her blog: lizzmurphypoet.blogspot.com (occasional posts - poetry readings, poetry news, new poetry, what I'm reading or googling, mini-reviews and the blogumn Rhythm & Muse) and website: http://sites.google.com/site/lizzmurphypoet (more book information, sample poems, images, CVs, etc — sorry it's been at a standstill for a while — life).

For a year's new work/in progress day by day (2016) by Lizz and an international group of poets and artists visit Project 366 coordinated by Kit Kelen at project365plus.com.au. A brilliant experience.

Contact: lizzmurphy7[at]gmail[dot]com[dot]au or visit on Facebook - look for Lizz Murphy Author.