Richard Murphy (poet)

Richard Murphy (born 6 August 1927 in County Mayo, Ireland) is an Anglo-Irish poet. He is a member of Aosdána and currently lives in Sri Lanka.

Early years

Murphy was born to an Anglo-Irish family at Milford House, near the Mayo-Galway border, in 1927. He spent much of his early childhood in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, where his father served in the Colonial Service and was active as mayor of Colombo and Governor General of the Bahamas (in succession to the Duke of Windsor). He first received his education at Canterbury School and Wellington College. He won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, at 17, where he studied English under C.S. Lewis. He was later educated at the Sorbonne and between 1953 and 1954, he ran a school in Crete. In his Archaeology of Love (1955), Murphy reflects on his experiences in England and the Continent.

His childhood in Ireland was documented in the film The Other Irish Travellers made by his niece, Fiona Murphy.

Return to Ireland

In 1954, he settled at Cleggan, on the coast of Galway. Several years later, in 1959, he purchased and renovated the Ave Maria, a traditional Galway hooker type boat, from Inishbofin fisherman, Michael Schofield, which he used to ferry visitors to the island. In 1969, he purchased Ardoileán (High Island), a small island in the vicinity of Inishbofin.

Murphy married Patsy Strang. Since 1971 he has been a poet-in-residence at nine American universities. He lives in Sri Lanka, having previously divided his time between Dublin and Durban, South Africa, where his daughter and her family reside. He is the maternal grandfather of YouTuber Caspar Lee. In 2002, a memoir of his life and times, The Kick, was published by Granta, constructed from detailed diaries kept over the course of five decades.

• AE Memorial Award for Poetry 1951
• First Prize in the Guinness Awards 1962
• British Arts Council Award 1967 & 1976
• Irish Arts Council Award (Marten Toonder) 1980
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature 1969
• Member of Aosdána, Ireland 1982
• American Irish Foundation Literary Award 1983
• Oxford Companion to English Literature (included) 1985
• Poetry Book Society Translation Award, London 1989
• Society of Authors Foundation Award 2002

• Welch, Robert (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. p. 383.