Christine Murray is an eminent poet and literary activist. She is known internationally for her work as creator and curator of the website Poethead. Poethead is a free, open access database of women’s poetry which is dedicated to the written expression of women poets from Ireland and throughout the world.
Christine is a passionate advocate for the voices of Irish women poets and an active member of the group Fired! Irish Women Poets and the Canon, who campaign for parity of esteem and inclusion of Irish women poets in the literary canon. Christine describes the background to Fired! here.
Publications and Achievements
Turas Press has published three of Christine’s collections:
- bind (2018)
- Gold Friend (2020)
- Her Red Songs (2024)
Christine’s overall body of work has been widely published, both in print and online, in chapbooks, anthologies and journals. Her publications include:
- Three Red Things, (Smithereens Press, 2013)
- Cycles, (Lapwing Press, 2013)
- The Blind (Oneiros Books, 2013
- Signature, (Bone Orchard Press, 2014)
- A Hierarchy of Halls, (Smithereens Press)
The following anthologies include Christine’s work:
- And Agamemnon Dead: An Anthology of Early 21st Century Irish Poetry, (eds Peter O’Neill and Walter Ruhlmann;
- All The Worlds Between, (Eds Srilata Krishnan and Fióna Bolger, Yoda Publishing, 2017)
- The Gladstone Readings,(Ed. Peter O’Neill, Famous Seamus Publishing, 2017)
Chris was a contributor to Eavan Boland: Inside History, (Eds Siobhán Campbell and Nessa O’Mahoney, Arlen House, 2016).
Reviews and Reception
bind
Eavan Boland had high praise for bind:
“These elegant and impressionistic poems work with a fractured landscape, one that will haunt and engage the reader…poems will remain in the reader’s memory long after they have caught the reader’s attention.”
Emma Lee reviewed bind in the The Blue Nib 36 December 2018.
” The graceful control of the poems demonstrates skill and understanding of lyric and subject. bind is a book to dip into and return to with the possibility of seeing something new on each visit.”
Under the title Nocturne for Voices One and Two, fragments of poetry from bind were set to music and performed by singer and sound artist Una Lee as part of the project How The World Begins Again – Irish Women in Sound and Music.
Gold Friend
As Gold Friend was published during the Covid 19 pandemic, it was not possible to have an in-person launch. The new collection was celebrated with an online launch which featured Christine in conversation with Dr Lucy Collins, Associate Professor of UCD Department of English, Drama and Film. Lucy said of Gold Friend
“At a time of environmental crisis, Gold Friend speaks powerfully of the ties that bind our living world. Through the associated figures of the tree and the bird, Chris Murray illuminates the relationship between dependence and freedom, and meditates on the creative necessity for close observation. These oblique poems can suddenly dazzle with their play of substance and light, as they move from the hidden intricacy of root systems, to the beetle’s reflective sheen. As well as bearing witness to the strange beauty of the natural world, these innovative poems testify to the remarkable intensity of human perception. They deserve our closest attention.”
Gold Friend was reviewed by Sean Hewitt in The Irish Times:
“There is something of Emily Dickinson in these poems, particularly Because I Did Not Stand Still, with Murray employing the jump between lines, and a restrained punctuation, to establish a heady free-play of images and association.”
Gold Friend was recommended in The Irish Times Best Poetry Books of 2021: A Subversion of Wordsworth to a Pandemic Personified by Martina Evans & Seán Hewitt.
Christine’s articles about the creative process underpinning her work, especially in the writing of her three Turas Press collections, are available on our Articles and Interviews page.
To access more reviews of Christine’s work, check out our Reviews page.
A comprehensive overview of Christine’s body of work can be found on her Poethead page.