CENTER VALLEY, Pa. \u2014 Erin Murphy, the 2026-27 Penn State Laureate, will visit Penn State Lehigh Valley on Monday, Oct. 19, to present \u201cWith These Hands: A Collaborative Poetry Experience,\u201d an interactive program that combines poetry, conversation and creative participation.<\/p>\n
The presentation will take place during Common Hour in Room 135 at Penn State Lehigh Valley.<\/p>\n
Murphy, a professor of English at Penn State Altoona and an award-winning poet, prose writer and educator, will read from and discuss her latest books, \u201cThe Book of Jobs: Poems About Work\u201d and \u201cSwoon: New & Selected Poems.\u201d Attendees also will have an opportunity to create their own lines of poetry as part of Murphy\u2019s collaborative project.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvents like this remind us of the power of imaginative self-expression to bring people together,\u201d said Margaret Christian, professor of English at Penn State Lehigh Valley and host of Murphy\u2019s campus visit. \u201cBeyond inspiring our campus community, engaging with the Laureate\u2019s work helps our students broaden their perspectives, spark new ideas, and experience the joy of creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lehigh Valley visit is part of Murphy\u2019s yearlong tour of Penn State campuses and communities across Pennsylvania. Her schedule includes more than 20 events featuring \u201cWith These Hands,\u201d through which Murphy is gathering individual lines of poetry from participants across the University. At the conclusion of her term as Laureate, she plans to use those contributions to create a collaborative poem representing voices from across Penn State.<\/p>\n
The project invites participants to consider work performed by parents, grandparents, family members or others and to write from that person\u2019s perspective, beginning with the phrase \u201cWith these hands I…\u201d The exercise connects with themes of work, family, memory and lived experience explored in Murphy\u2019s poetry.<\/p>\n
Murphy is the author or editor of 16 books and joined the Penn State Altoona faculty in 2005. Her teaching includes poetry, nonfiction, fiction, editing and medical humanities. Her work has earned numerous honors, including the University-wide Penn State Alumni Teaching Fellow Award. Most recently, her poetry collection \u201cHuman Resources\u201d received the 2026 Storytrade Book Award in Poetry.<\/p>\n
Collaboration has been a recurring theme throughout Murphy\u2019s work as an educator and community arts practitioner. As Penn State Laureate, she is bringing that approach to audiences throughout the commonwealth, inviting people from different disciplines and backgrounds to participate in the creative process.<\/p>\n
The Penn State Laureate is a full-year position awarded to a full-time faculty member in the humanities or arts. The program is designed to bring greater visibility to the arts, humanities and the University\u2019s broader mission, with each laureate bringing a distinct scholarly or artistic perspective to audiences across Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CENTER VALLEY, Pa. \u2014 Erin Murphy, the 2026-27 Penn State Laureate, will visit Penn State Lehigh Valley on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-291667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}