Overview

""Do not bother to smile/ for your photo ID / in Human Resources. / In Human Resources / no one has a face,"" Erin Murphy writes. Yet in this book of documentary poems exploring labor and employment issues, Murphy gives a face and a voice to those who have been marginalized by impersonal-even brutal-working conditions. With subjects ranging from migrant farmers in the Southwest United States to cell phone manufacturers in Shenzhen, China, these persona, erasure, and memoir poems illuminate the human beings behind profits and policies. In ""Rana Plaza,"" a survivor of the Bangladesh factory collapse survives ""on rainwater and biscuits / scavenged from the rucksacks of the dead. / Even now she carries / their dust in her mouth."" Likewise, readers will carry these speakers' stories long after finishing this compelling and necessary collection. Winnner, Pencraft 2026 Best Book Awards for Poetry/Music

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Reviews

""Erin Murphy's latest collection, Human Resources, is a love song to the profound work of survival, the labor required to see it done. These poems praise without glancing away from pain or difficulty, all that is messy and fully human. There are portraits here that examine social and environmental injustice-while also illuminating the tenacity housed within the blood and bone of people who rarely make it into verse. I'm reminded of Levine, Levis, Laux, and Espada. Salmon Poetry gets it right yet again, because Murphy's poems ask the crucial questions for our time-questions that for far too long have been left ringing in exhausted hands."" - Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet and The Dead Peasant's Handbook ""Like the sweetgrass basket, this haunting collection is not only intricately crafted, it serves as a testament of labor, seen and unseen. Human Resources elevates the voices of people exploited by the global workforce. These documentary poems are lucid, potent, and alive. With her skillful hand, Erin Murphy cuts down a corrupt system that insists our value is determined by our work, our power by our wealth."" - Kwoya Fagin Maples, author of Mend and Long Eye ""The second time I read Erin Murphy's newest collection of brilliance, Human Resources, I marveled at the well-crafted structure of the poems and the pitch-perfect variety of poetic forms chosen for each one. Her use of different forms throughout the book underscores the various modes of horror that have been implemented in the pursuit of profit over the course of history, the valuing of capital over community. The first time I read these poems, the stories and human beings involved, my heart broke. Human Resources stands as Murphy's best work to date in an already stellar career. She is a poet at the height of her powers."" - Le Hinton, author of Sing Silence and Elegies for an Empire

""Erin Murphy's latest collection, Human Resources, is a love song to the profound work of survival, the labor required to see it done. These poems praise without glancing away from pain or difficulty, all that is messy and fully human. There are portraits here that examine social and environmental injustice-while also illuminating the tenacity housed within the blood and bone of people who rarely make it into verse. I'm reminded of Levine, Levis, Laux, and Espada. Murphy's poems ask the crucial questions for our time-questions that for far too long have been left ringing in exhausted hands."" - Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet and The Dead Peasant's Handbook ""Like the sweetgrass basket, this haunting collection is not only intricately crafted, it serves as a testament of labor, seen and unseen. Human Resources elevates the voices of people exploited by the global workforce. These documentary poems are lucid, potent, and alive. With her skillful hand, Erin Murphy cuts down a corrupt system that insists our value is determined by our work, our power by our wealth."" - Kwoya Fagin Maples, author of Mend and Long Eye ""The second time I read Erin Murphy's newest collection of brilliance, Human Resources, I marveled at the well-crafted structure of the poems and the pitch-perfect variety of poetic forms chosen for each one. The first time I read these poems, the stories and human beings involved, my heart broke. Human Resources stands as Murphy's best work to date in an already stellar career. She is a poet at the height of her powers."" - Le Hinton, author of Sing Silence and Elegies for an Empire ""If you only read one book of poetry again in your life (or for the first time), you need to read Human Resources. Murphy has crafted a collection of poems that is a powerful glimpse into the lives of workers across the nation and the globe, across myriad workplaces and occupations. The people and their stories are so compelling that you will read the book in a torrent and then read it again slowly to savor the wonderful use of language, the gripping narratives, and the tender and respectful portraits of her subjects...Human Resources is a powerful book that captures the human moments that make up the daily struggle to make a living and does so with the best that well-crafted poetry can deliver."" -John Beck, School of Labor & Industrial Relations, Michigan State University ""The individual poems show awareness of the human condition, compassion, and care. Murphy masterfully uses form and order to bring us face to face with life."" -Glynn Young, tweetspeak ""Human Resources engages with work performed in fields, in ramshackle warehouses, and on assembly lines, spoken in the voices of the workers themselves in many cases...The poems in Human Resources are thoughtful, layered, and, for the right reasons, heart breaking. Someone, someday, somewhere should be able to read about what we were like when we were like this."" -Jennifer A. Sutherland, Plume

""Erin Murphy's latest collection, Human Resources, is a love song to the profound work of survival, the labor required to see it done. These poems praise without glancing away from pain or difficulty, all that is messy and fully human. There are portraits here that examine social and environmental injustice-while also illuminating the tenacity housed within the blood and bone of people who rarely make it into verse. I'm reminded of Levine, Levis, Laux, and Espada. Salmon Poetry gets it right yet again, because Murphy's poems ask the crucial questions for our time-questions that for far too long have been left ringing in exhausted hands."" - Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet and The Dead Peasant's Handbook ""Like the sweetgrass basket, this haunting collection is not only intricately crafted, it serves as a testament of labor, seen and unseen. Human Resources elevates the voices of people exploited by the global workforce. These documentary poems are lucid, potent, and alive. With her skillful hand, Erin Murphy cuts down a corrupt system that insists our value is determined by our work, our power by our wealth."" - Kwoya Fagin Maples, author of Mend and Long Eye ""The second time I read Erin Murphy's newest collection of brilliance, Human Resources, I marveled at the well-crafted structure of the poems and the pitch-perfect variety of poetic forms chosen for each one. Her use of different forms throughout the book underscores the various modes of horror that have been implemented in the pursuit of profit over the course of history, the valuing of capital over community. The first time I read these poems, the stories and human beings involved, my heart broke. Human Resources stands as Murphy's best work to date in an already stellar career. She is a poet at the height of her powers."" - Le Hinton, author of Sing Silence and Elegies for an Empire ""If you only read one book of poetry again in your life (or for the first time), you need to read Human Resources. Murphy has crafted a collection of poems that is a powerful glimpse into the lives of workers across the nation and the globe, across myriad workplaces and occupations. The people and their stories are so compelling that you will read the book in a torrent and then read it again slowly to savor the wonderful use of language, the gripping narratives, and the tender and respectful portraits of her subjects...Human Resources is a powerful book that captures the human moments that make up the daily struggle to make a living and does so with the best that well-crafted poetry can deliver."" -John Beck, School of Labor & Industrial Relations, Michigan State University The individual poems show awareness of the human condition, compassion, and care. Murphy masterfully uses form and order to bring us face to face with life. -Glynn Young, tweetspeak

Author Information

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of more than a dozen previous books of poetry and prose, most recently Fluent in Blue. Her awards include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, two Foreword INDIES Book of the Year awards, and a Best of the Net award. She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona and poetry editor of The Summerset Review.

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