Peter E. Murphy is the author of a dozen books and chapbooks of poetry and prose including the forthcoming A Tipsy Fairy Tale: A Coming of Age Memoir of Alcohol and Redemption about growing up in Wales and New York City. The founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University based in Atlantic City, he leads writing workshops around the US an in Europe.

I met Peter Murphy at the Murphy Writing Winter Getaway in January 2024. I was lucky enough to be one of thirty-two scholarship recipients for the Getaway’s 30th anniversary and was able to speak with Peter during the photo taken of Peter with the awardees. Fortunately, Mr. Murphy is easygoing and lighthearted and he did not look down his nose when I used the fact that we share the name “Peter” as an introduction. Later he agreed to this interview just prior to the publication of his memoir, A Tipsy Fairy Tale, which he finished during Covid lockdown.

Thanks for doing this, Mr. Murphy. What is a difference you notice between writing prose and poetry?

For most of my life, I thought of myself as a poet who occasionally wrote prose. In my 40’s I wrote reviews and articles about teaching. At 60, I started writing personal essays, and it scared me. In poetry I disguise myself by using metaphor, myth, fairy tales, and downright lies. But writing prose, specifically memoir, I have to tell the truth. At times, it feels like I’m changing my underwear in public. Lately, I think of myself as a poet who writes more prose than poetry. I’m trying to figure out why.

Do you think perhaps you’re tired of “disguising yourself,” and you want to be known, and that’s why you’ve turned to memoir? Or is that too on the nose?

Interesting… I just had a conversation with my daughter about what photos to put on my newly revised website. I didn’t want to use pre-pandemic pictures where my hair was cut short, and I dressed in muted colors. When she asked why not? I said, “Look at me!” My hair’s longer than it’s been since the 70’s and it has a purple streak. I have an earring in one ear and was wearing a bright green shirt, purple jeans and purple sneakers.

Covid changed us all. Covid changed me. I finished writing my memoir during Covid not sure if I or any of my loved ones would survive. I guess I was wondering what really mattered, and realized I was hiding in lots of ways. I don’t know what it means, but I like more of the inner me presenting on the outside. 

What made you want to be a writer? What keeps you writing?

I thought of myself as a poet when I was 15. It was the only thing that made sense to me. I wanted to express myself. I wanted to tell the world how miserable I was. Over the years I realized that merely expressing myself wasn’t enough. I wanted to explore, discover and reveal to myself what I didn’t know or what I didn’t know I knew. These moments of revelation, that’s what keeps me writing.

I love that! In your essay, “Breaking through the Abstract,” you said it can often take a poem a year or more to mature. Do you look for any specific signal a poem is finished? When do you stop revising?

I’ve always been a relentless reviser, usually writing more than 50 drafts of a poem. My problem is that I revise prose with the same care, troubling each word, phrase, clause, sentence, paragraph to make sure I got it right. And then I do it again. And again. But writing 50 drafts of an essay. Yikes!

Knowing when a piece is done is always a challenge. Keats defined Negative Capability, an essential quality for a poet, as holding two contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time. Here are mine: (1) “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” ~Paul Valery, and (2) “… a poem comes right with a click like a closing box.” ~W.B. Yeats. So, yeah, I keep revising. I keep listening, waiting to hear Yeats’ “click.”

In another essay you said that you’ve told your students, “The more you suffer, the greater your capacity for happiness.” I find this very intriguing. Is this idea explored in your forthcoming memoir?

I thought I had a normal childhood until I was in my 30’s when I realized that maybe mine was a wee bit different from most other kids. I was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where my mother ended her life when I was 7. I grew up in a series of homes with a lisp and a Welsh accent. I was kidnapped and tortured by one gang when I was 8, and captured by gunpoint by another gang at 12. I became a boy toy for a priest. And when I broke my collar bone and 6 ribs, I fell in love with the pain killers that followed, and when they ran out, alcohol became my lover. This is the heart of my memoir, A Tipsy Fairy Tale, and how poetry eventually led me out of addiction to a kind of “real” life.

I’m telling you this because when I was young and stupid, I thought I was supposed to be happy. Recently I wrote in a poem, “I believed being happy was the key to happiness, but that just made me sadder.” Do you know Stephen Dun’s poem “Happiness”?

These days I find that being of service to others has the possibility of providing glimpses of happiness. Keats said that “Soul Making” is essential for a poet. And we do that, in a sense we make our souls through suffering. As a Bahá’í, I believe that we grow and possibly attain happiness by facing and overcoming difficulties. I’m working on it.

Thank you for sharing the Stephen Dunn poem. I actually have read it before. My Mom has all his books as he’s somewhat of a local hero of hers (and mine), and I love that poem. To me it speaks to the promise and elusiveness of happiness. As for facing your difficulties to achieve happiness—that sounds promising. In AA I once heard, “Character is developed through the daily discipline of duties done.” Do you have a favorite motivational phrase that helps you face and overcome difficulties?

Outside the Imperial War Museum in London is a 12ft. decaying slab of concrete with the words “Change Your Life” graffitied on it. The quote is from a poem by Rilke. The balls it took for someone to do that! I use it as the home screen on my phone so I see it every time I pick it up.

That’s a good one. There’s always changes that need to be made. They say writers, in writing about their personal experiences, get to experience life twice. Do you think non-writers are wasting 50% percent of their potential? (This is tongue and cheek but also in earnest.)

No, I’m not a poetry snob. What’s important is having an inner life. There are many paths to cultivating it.  

Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’m known to act snobbish at times and often need to be corrected. Thank you! What is the best advice you’ve received as a writer?

I have no idea. Wait, I do. When I was nineteen, I read a poem at an open mic at a bar in Midtown, Manhattan. This is the first time I read in public. In the middle of the poem, a drunk stood up and shouted, “Take it all off!” He was right. When writing, I need to take it all off.

– Pete Able