Murphy

Penn State Altoona English professor, award-winning poet and prose writer Erin Murphy was recently awarded Penn State University’s laureate position for the 2026-27 school year.

Murphy said it was an incredible honor to receive the position, as she dreamed of holding the title in the past.

To bring greater awareness to the arts and the humanities, the annual faculty award highlights a full-time faculty member and their work across all Penn State University campuses in the commonwealth, media appearances and community outreach.

Next year, Murphy plans on incorporating an “interactive presentation” during her campus tour, where she’ll ask audience members to write a poem. At the end of her laureateship, she’ll compile select lines from submitted works and create one large poem.

She used this method in her previous work, “In My America,” which totaled to about 120 lines created by Penn State students and staff.

Learning poetry goes beyond writing poems, according to Murphy, who said that previous students in different majors attested that her poetry writing classes helped them write concisely. She hopes attending students at her future laureate presentations find similar takeaways.

“I hope it speaks to students no matter what their major is,” she said.

This month, Murphy published her 16th book, “Swoon: New and Selected Poems,” that features select poems from past collections and demi-sonnets from a new section published by Grayson Books.

What’s interesting about “Swoon” is its cover, which captured the 2021 supermoon hovering in Alexandria, Pennsylvania. Photo credits go to Peter Hopsicker, associate vice provost for faculty affairs at Penn State, who originally posted the photo on Facebook. Murphy saw Peter’s post and others like it, but she said it took her a while to put down her phone and view the moon with her own eyes.

Becoming inspired by the specific yet universal experience, she wrote the demi-sonnet, “Metaphor.”

She said “Metaphor” is an accessible poem because everyone can relate to tapping the like button on social media apps and ignoring the person sitting next to us.

Many people find poetry intoxicating or boring, and I hope to show them that poetry can be about everyday experiences, she said.

She will also share her work at the international literary festival in Dublin, Ireland, this weekend.

Hosting presentations in celebration of Penn State University’s arts and humanities program will give attendees a space to share something collectively, she said, which is special in today’s climate of technological separation.

When we go to an arts event, we share an event that helps us connect as human beings, she said.

Mirror Staff Writer Colette Costlow is at 814-946-7414.