Ciaran Berry was the recipient of the inaugural Michael Murphy Memorial Prize for The Sphere of Birds.
On National Poetry Day 2010 the English Association announced the inauguration of a new biennial prize for a distinctive first volume of poetry in English published in Britain or Ireland – in the first instance between January 2008 and June 2011.
The Prize was established in honour of Liverpool-born poet Michael Murphy who died of a brain tumour, aged 43, in May 2009.
‘The Sphere of Birds is full of capacious but rigorously controlled poems in which, without strain or undue artifice, Ciaran Berry moves outward from the personal to a breadth of cultural and historical reference, before returning quietly to details of remembered experience. Far from being gratuitous or ostentatious, his literary range is purposefully engaged to cast light on the idiosyncrasies of human behaviour. Although this is a first collection, Berry is already a poised and mature lyric poet with a clear grasp of how a meticulous technique can be used to explore complex subjects.’
— Judges comments
The Award was presented on National Poetry Day, 6 October 2011.
www.le.ac.uk/engassoc/prizes/MM.html for further information
