ALTOONA, Pa. — A poem by Erin Murphy, professor of English at Penn State Altoona, was featured in Rattle magazine and its “Rattlecast” podcast on the eve of the 2025 U.S. presidential inauguration.
Murphy’s poem “Insomnia Chronicles XXVI” was selected for “Poet’s Respond,” the magazine’s weekly feature that highlights a current events poem. On the podcast, she read and discussed the poem, which was written in response to the inauguration. The episode also includes an interview with poet Denise Duhamel.
Rattle editor Timothy Green said he loves “the playfulness and humor” of “Insomnia Chronicles XXVI,” as well as its movement to the final “profound statement.” It is one of Murphy’s series of prose poems dramatizing the associative connections sparked by sleeplessness. Other poems from the series have been published in “Concision,” “Anti-Heroin Chic,” “Prose Poems,” “SWWIM” and “Action, Spectacle!”
Murphy is the author or editor of more than a dozen previous books, chapbooks and anthologies, with two additional books forthcoming from Salmon Poetry and Wesleyan University Press. She is the poet laureate of Blair County, poetry editor of The Summerset Review and Penn State’s inaugural Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow for the Big Ten Academic Alliance.