Two Lips Went Shopping
Two huge lips went shopping
on a pogo stick
for a red satin handbag
coordinated in colour
with their cupid’s bow
This is a book for anyone who has ever shopped – or worked in shops. But whether you find yourself wincing or laughing could depend on which side of the shop counter you’re on at the time. Find out what it’s like to be a young shopgirl, vent your frustrations with today’s supermarket society and the advertising and media industries, take a nostalgic trip back to the days of the corner shop. Using consumerism as a platform, Two Lips Went Shopping follows the thread down laneways where the baby trade and Female Genital Mutilation flourish passing protests of women against war and violence.
2000 | ISBN 9781875559961 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 145 pp
Reviews
Spirited, cheeky and angst-free … the poetry is unrhymed drawing pleasure from the rhythm and feel of language. Fishwife … is a sensuous marriage of salt and skin. Betrayal and Soup Bones sharply evoke the anxious and vulnerable child. …her best poems remodel the everyday to recast the familiar and frustrating with witty flair.
–Mike Shuttleworth, The Sunday Age
In Two Lips Went Shopping Murphy reminds us of the essentially democratic nature of poetry. These are poems for the people, and in an ideal world they would be posted at every check-out counter in every supermarket.
–Christopher Bantick, Canberra Sunday Times
'The poems are intense visual and olfactory experiences, and they also contain exquisite vignettes of life and its struggles.'
–Sunday Canberra Times
'This collection of poems is amusing, amazing and entertaining ... A fun read that can be picked up at any time, anywhere you need a rest from the day's harrowing experiences.'
–Golden Threads