Miguel Murphy is the recipient of a Swarthout Award and an Academy of American Poets Prize, an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame's Phoenix Institute and holds an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. His poems and reviews appear in RAIN TAXI, Blackbird, Hayden's Ferry Review and others. He lives in Venice Beach, California and teaches at Santa Monica College.

Books by Miguel Murphy: A Book Called Rats

Other poems on the web by Miguel Murphy:
Three poems
Three poems
Three poems

About A Book Called Rats:

"A Book Called Rats is a stunning collection, full of dark eroticism and haunting images that pull the reader into a world both beautiful and dangerous. The human condition doesn't change, but suddenly, in this sensuous, charged book with its perfect music, we are fascinated anew."
—Beckian Fritz Goldberg

"As a text that inspires a modern-day Pied Piper who will dazzle and lure innocence away from the unsuspecting victim...A Book Called Rats will make the meek flinch with its romance to violence, but few will negate the power of its imagery and the direct address to the flesh as predator and prey."
—Rigoberto Gonzalez

"Miguel Murphy's always exceptional poems show his work with characterization is invariably interesting and often surprising, perhaps even to the poet himself, finding a symbiosis with contemporary narrative that is both compelling and disturbing. Consistently singular, edgy, and haunting, these pieces operate best at an intuitive level, giving the reader something that gets under the skin. The struggles in these poems are literarily courageous ones."
—Alberto Rios