Altoona English professor's prize-winning poem featured online

Erin Murphy

Erin Murphy, professor of English at Penn State Altoona, has published her latest book of poetry, “Fluent in Blue.”

“Fluent in Blue,” published by Grayson Books, was also named a finalist for Ohio University’s Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the Alice James Award sponsored by Alice James Books, and the Word Works Books Washington Prize.

Credit: Penn State

ALTOONA, Pa. — “The Internet of Things,” a prize-winning poem by Erin Murphy, professor of English at Penn State Altoona, was featured this week on Rattle magazine’s website. The poem won the $5,000 2021 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award and also was published in the journal’s print issue.

Murphy also has published new poetry and nonfiction in several peer-reviewed literary journals.

Five poems from her forthcoming book “Taxonomies” were published recently in One Art: A Journal of Poetry. The poems are demi-sonnets, a form Murphy invented.

One Art also announced that two of Murphy’s poems, “Revision Lesson” and “Hide-and-Seek,” were among the journal’s top 25 most-read poems of 2021.

A series of demi-sonnets based on Google Autofill phrases was recently published in Sledgehammer.

Her essay “pər(-ə)l,” the title of which is a phonetic spelling, appears in the current issue of Superstition Review.

Murphy’s poems “The Strip Mall of Second Chances,” “Tanya the Phlebotomist,” “Concealed” and “Women’s Work” were published in February in New World Writing.

Her poem “Iambic Pentameter” appears in Dialogist.

Murphy is the author or editor of 13 books, two of which are forthcoming in 2022: “Taxonomies” and “Human Resources.” She and her colleague Todd Davis will read from their new poetry collections at 7 p.m. March 29 in the Titelman Study of the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts.

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