Teri Murray

NEWS...

Sadly Teri Murray passed away in early 2017 (R.I.P.)

TERI MURRAY's  collection - 'UNDER A LINNET'S WING' (Eliza Press) -  was launched May 14th, (7.30pm) in Gerry Flannery's public house on Catherine Street, Limerick.

Teri Murray was born in Lewisham, in Kent (UK) but grew up in Dublin and her poetry is full of the characters and places she knew as a child. In 1987, she won the Wicklow Community Award for a children's play and lived in Limerick for some years until her passing in early 2017. She has published four collections of poetry, the first, Coddle and Tripe (1998, Stonebridge), was a collaborative work with her partner, the late Liam Mulligan (R.I.P.). This was followed by Poems from the Exclusion Zone (2001, Stonebridge), The Authority of Winter (2007, Stonebridge) and Where The Dagda Dances - New and Selected Poems (2010, Revival Press). From her earliest work, Teri maintained a timeless sense of history and place, as captured in her early poem, Greenhills. A regular reader at the White House Bar poetry readings in Limerick, Ireland until that venue's closure, renovation and re-opening when poetry readings were discontinued.

POEM

(1)

GREENHILLS

The road severs the barren plains of the flocks of Eider,

no marker for the grave of the tribe;

Parhalonians, last of a great race

driven to the perimeters to live and die,

like me.

/...(Stanza one of two)

POEM

(2)

BARS AND LATCHES

I never could gauge the tension

between blocks and spaces

when my mother's fingers

unravelled the yarn

in the long silences

/...(Stanza one of three)

POEM

(3)

THE PARLIAMENT OF CRONES

The mother of God moved to Fatima Mansions

when she was just past child-bearing age

and the plaster skin that had moulded her

started to peel and fade

/...(Stana one of seven)

What they said:-

It is in the recollections from childhood that friendship, loyalty and admiration for companions and times past really shines through...

- Mike Byrne (on The Authority of Winter)

Murray inscribes a much-needed voice for inhabitgants of all exclusion zones, whether they are of personal construction or sociologically determined.

                            - Bridget Wallace (on Poems from the Exclusion Zone)

It is in the recollections from childhood that friendship, loyalty and admiration for companions and times past really shines through...

                              - Mike Byrne (on The Authority of Winter)

... a poet at ease with the blending of mythology and everyday observation, heightening our perceptions... themes of loss, grief and remembering recur... an accomplished seamstress of poetry.

                               - Ciaran O'Driscoll (on Where The Dagda Dances)

Only the most gifted and able of poets can write in a way that conveys a sense of almost unbearable loss and yet somehow manages to ease her own inevitable losses.

                                - Pauline Fayne

See Also:-

Liam Mulligan