Wake Forest University Press

Irish Poetry

Richard Murphy - The Mirror Wall (clothbound)

On a remote fortress in Sri Lanka is a long wall of polished plaster, with mysterious golden women painted on the rock above. Twenty of these frescoes have survived since the fifth century. This wall, The Mirror Wall, is covered with graffiti: hundreds of songs relating to these cloud nymphs written during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries.

Richard Murphy's poems were inspired by these songs of the Mirror Wall.

"Reading, one enters an exotic world…. Murphy's writing renders it with vivid clarity, and agile nuances of tone…."  Andrew Waterman, PN Review

"[A] taste does not do justice to this mounting pleasures, no pun intended, of this handsomely produced book." David Gancheroff, The Jerusalem Post

"A success on its own terms, The Mirror Wall may well also be laying the foundations of future success for Murphy's poetry." Peter McDonald, The Irish Review

$13.95
1989   84 pages
clothbound
ISBN 978-0-916390-36-5