Bully Love, Patricia Colleen Murphy's second book, won the 2019 Press
53 Award for Poetry, selected by Poetry Series Editor Tom Lombardo.
Bully Love follows the poet from Ohio to Arizona, from cows and
cornfields to the Sonoran Desert, from youth to middle age, from
daughter to orphan, from child to childfree, from loneliness to love. As
the poet leaves a broken home to build a new life for herself, she
struggles to adapt to a land teaming with dangers. Against a searing
sunny backdrop, the poems describe how she makes peace with an
inhospitable life and landscape as she overcomes hardships such as
madness, death, depression, fear, anger, loneliness, heat, and hills.
She ultimately finds beauty in the desert Edward Abbey called, "not the
most suitable of environments for human habitation." The poems in Bully
Love examine the long-term effects of displacement: a mother displaced
from her home by mental illness, a women displaced from the Midwest to
the Southwest, a girl scout camp displaced by a Uranium processing
plant, desert wildlife displaced by urban sprawl and mining, wilderness
displaced by careless tourists, ranches displaced by freeways, solitude
displaced by companionship, fear displaced by joy. The collection
examines how humans form relationships with both landscapes and lovers,
all through the eyes of a woman who leaves a forlorn home, suffers
relentless loss, and falls in love in and with one of the world's
harshest ecosystems.
