Wrong Side of Town

Aidan Murphy is a Cork-born poet long since resident in Dublin. His collections include The Restless Factor (1985), The Way the Money Goes (1987) – a Poetry Book Society recommendation – Small Sky, Big Change (1989), Stark Naked Blues (1997), Looking in at Eden and, his first publication from Dedalus Press, Wrong Side of Town (2015). Neon Baby: New and Selected Poems was published by New Island in 2007. On Aidan Murphy: "There is a muscular male minimalism to Murphy’s language, more influenced by the demotic of American verse than by the poetic speech of the European Western Archipelago (known in Britain as the British Isles). It is a male speech which avoids the asserted invulnerability of machismo. If anything, the male protagonists in Murphy’s narratives and monologues are only too aware of their own fragility. There is a bravery at work here too, too well-informed to be mistaken for foolhardiness. Murphy’s protagonists realise that life is threatening to break them, but they always manage to summon the last of their spiritual resources to avoid being broken." — Patrick Cotter, Poetry International