Peter Murphy (1945 - 2024) was a playwright, author, librettist, photographer and poet recognized for his accomplishments in various forms of the genre, including concrete poetry and sound poetry. His visual and written works are notable for their wit and ability to accentuate life’s everyday absurdities. The breadth of his talent was remarkable. A glowing review of his debut short story collection, Black Light, in the February-March I980 issue of Australian Book Review opens with the line, “Peter Murphy is one of the very best poets under forty writing in Australia today.”
"Horrible" by Peter Murphy
“Australian Tourists” takes aim at Australians’ uncanny habit of holidaying in places very much like the ones in which they live. Growing up in Sydney, a coastal city with beaches aplenty, I always found it curious that the entire metropolis seemed to resettle just a few hours up the coast each summer, to beaches not too dissimilar from the ones left behind. For me, the most impressive feature of the poem is its economy of language, made possible by Murphy’s deft line breaks. The poem’s idiom, overtly ordinary, evokes the monoculture it describes, and is lubricated by Murphy’s use of one word lines, subtle repetition and some really clever rhyme (“transfigure,” “St Kilda,” “mirror”) that occasion a flow so effortless, the effort required in reading the poem is “to persuade yourself / you’ve moved.”
Australian Tourists
travelling in Australia
have to be particularly
sensitive
to difference
if they're to believe
they’re somewhere else
or that warmer climates
or denser cities
in which they're introduced
to people like themselves
can transfigure
what looks like home
into the exotic
when palms in St Kilda
mirror
those in Cairns.
And though there's no debate
about distance
or change
it's paradoxical
that effort is required
to persuade yourself
you've moved.
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