Cork poet Gerry Murphy has been learning to laugh in the face of adversity

The humour in Gerry Murphy’s poems was a reaction to solemnity, writes Colette Sheridan.

It is 30 years since poet Gerry Murphy launched his first collection at Cork’s Triskel Arts Centre. It was entitled A Small Fat Boy Walking Backwards. His seventh collection, Muse, will be launched at the same venue during the Cork World Book Festival. As the shy, funny poet says: “I haven’t been found out yet.”

Murphy, who works as a lifeguard at Mayfield swimming pool, is treasured beyond Cork. (There is interest in Murphy in Greece, says his publisher, Pat Boran, of Dedalus Press.) Murphy is an acclaimed purveyor of humorous, irreverent, satirical, political and erotic poetry. “The joker of his own tristesse,” is how critic Robert Welch described him, while the poet, John Montague, called him “a spiritual anarchist”.