Michael D Murphy

My first conscious experience of thinking as a writer was when I was sixteen, relentlessly bored in a mundane job. I started to compose poems and songs as a means of surviving the working day. Not much has changed - I still write songs, still read poetry, but now have taken to writing novels. I'm currently working on a tale set in Georgian London, set around the Thames. I've published poems in magazines and essays on Coleridge, but there is something about novel writing – the long haul, the imagined landscape, the contemplative discipline – that seems to suit my need for a quest. The sixpoets writing group has been a great source of inspiration and creative stimulation. The other writers are uniquely talented, all with distinct voices, and all having incisive skills of expression. I have never failed to be inspired by our fun and lively workshops. Perhaps more important than all of this - the sixpoets is a supportive group where friendship is forged and ego is non-existent, which allows for the free expression of our ideas