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Les Murray (poet)

This article is about the poet. For the sports broadcaster, seeLes Murray (broadcaster).

Leslie Allan MurrayAO(17 October 1938 – 29 April 2019) was an Australianpoet,anthologistandcritic.His career spanned over 40 years and he published nearly 30 volumes of poetry as well as twoverse novelsand collections of his prose writings.

Les Murray
AO
Murray in 2004
Born(1938-10-17)17 October 1938
Nabiac, New South Wales,Australia
Died29 April 2019(2019-04-29)(aged 80)
Taree, New South Wales,Australia
EducationTaree High School
Alma materUniversity of Sydney
Occupation(s)Writer, poet
Political partyAustralian Commonwealth Party(1972-1974)
Spouse
Valerie Morelli
​
(m.1962)​
Children5

Translations of Murray's poetry have been published in 11 languages: French, German, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Hindi, Russian, and Dutch. Murray's poetry won many awards and he is regarded as "the leading Australian poet of his generation".[1][2]He was rated in 1997 by theNational Trust of Australiaas one of the 100Australian Living Treasures.[3][4]

Life and career

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Les Murray was born inNabiac,New South Wales, and grew up in nearby Bunyah. He attended primary and early high school in Nabiac and thenTaree High School.At age 18, while watchingmayfliesalong the river, Murray decided to become a poet.[5]

In 1957, Murray entered theUniversity of Sydneyin the Faculty of Arts and joined theRoyal Australian Navy Reserveto obtain a small income. Speaking about this time toClive Jameshe said:

"I was as soft-headed as you could imagine. I was actually hanging on to childhood because I hadn't had much teenage. My Mum died and my father collapsed. I had to look after him. So I was off the chain at last, I was in Sydney and I didn't quite know how to do adulthood or teenage. I was being coltish and foolish and childlike. I received the least distinguished degree Sydney ever issued. I don't think anyone's ever matched it."[6]

In 1961The Bulletinpublished one of Murray's poems.[5]He developed an interest in ancient and modern languages, and eventually qualified to become a professional translator at theAustralian National University(where he was employed from 1963 to 1967). During his studies he met other poets and writers such asGeoffrey Lehmann,Bob Ellis,[7]Clive JamesandLex Banning,as well as future political journalistsLaurie OakesandMungo McCallum Jr.Between times, hehitch-hikedaround Australia. Murray lived for several months at aSydney Pushhousehold atMilsons Point,[8]: 97–99 where he readVirgil'sEcloguesat the suggestion of his host, Brian Jenkins.[8]: 120 

Murray returned to undergraduate studies in the 1960s. He converted to Roman Catholicism when he marriedBudapest-born fellow-student Valerie Morelli in 1962. His poetry frequently refers to Catholic themes.[9]The couple lived in Wales and Scotland and travelled in Europe for over a year in the late 1960s. They had five children together. Their son Alexander was diagnosed withautism,which prompted Murray to discover traits of the condition in himself.[10]In an interview withImage,Murray described himself as "a high-performingAsperger".[11]

In 1971, Murray resigned from his "respectable cover occupations" of translator andpublic servantinCanberrato write poetry full-time. The family returned to Sydney, but Murray, planning to return to his home at Bunyah, managed to buy back part of the lost family home in 1975 and to visit there intermittently until 1985 when he and his family returned to live there permanently.[7]

Murray died on 29 April 2019 at aTaree, New South Wales,nursing home at the age of 80.[12][13]

Literary career

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Murray had a long career in poetry andliterary journalismin Australia. When he was 38 years old, hisSelected Poemswas published byAngus & Robertson,signifying his emergence as a leading poet.[1]The Murray biographer Peter Alexander has written that "all Murray's volumes are uneven, though as Bruce Clunies Ross would remark, 'There's" less good "and" good ", but it's very hard to find really inferior Murray'."[8]: 278 

When Murray was a student at the University of Sydney he was the editor ofHermeswithGeoffrey Lehmann(1962).[14]Murray edited the magazinePoetry Australia(1973–79).[7]During his tenure as poetry editor for Angus & Robertson (1976–90) he was responsible for publishing the first book of poetry byPhilip Hodgins.In March 1990, Murray became literary editor ofQuadrant.[15]He edited several anthologies, including theAnthology of Australian Religious Poetry.First published in 1986, a second edition was published in 1991. It interprets religion loosely[7]and includes the work of many of poets suchA. D. Hope,Judith Wright,Rosemary Dobson,Kevin Hart,Bruce Daweand himself. TheNew Oxford Book of Australian Versewas most recently reissued in 1996.

Murray described himself, perhaps half-jokingly, as the last of the "Jindyworobaks",an Australian literary movement whose white members sought to promoteindigenous Australian ideas and customs,particularly in poetry. Though not a member, he was influenced by their work, something that is frequently discussed by Murray critics and scholars in relation to his themes and sensibilities.

In 2007,Dan Chiassonwrote inThe New Yorkerthat Murray was "now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading English-language poets".[16]Murray was talked of as a possible winner of theNobel Prize in Literature.[17]

Murray retired as literary editor ofQuadrantin late 2018 for health reasons.[15]

Poetry

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Murray published around 30 volumes of poetry and is often called Australia's bush-bard.The academicDavid McCooeydescribed Murray in 2002 as "a traditional poet whose work is radically original".[18]His poetry is rich and diverse, while also exhibiting "an obvious unity and wholeness" based on "his consistent commitment to the ideals and values of what he sees as the real Australia".[7]

While admiring Murray's linguistic skill and poetic achievement, poetJohn Tranter,in 1977, also expressed uneasiness about some aspects of his work. Tranter praises Murray's "good humour" and concludes that "For all my disagreements, and many of them are profound, I found theVernacular Republicfull of rich and complex poetry. "[1]

Bourke writes that:

Murray's strength is the dramatization of general ideas and the description of animals, machines, or landscape. At times his immense self-confidence producesgarrulityand sweeping, dismissive prescriptions. The most attractive poems show enormous powers of invention, lively play with language, and command of rhythm and idiom. In these poems Murray invariably explores social questions through a celebration of common objects from the natural world, as in "The Broad Bean Sermon", or machines, as in "Machine Portraits with Pendant Spaceman". Always concerned with a "common reader", Murray's later poetry (for example,Dog Fox Field, 1990, Translations from the Natural World,1992) recovers "populist" conventions of newspaper verse, singsong rhyme, anddoggerel.

American reviewerAlbert Mobiliowrites in his review ofLearning Human: Selected Poemsthat Murray revived the traditionalballad form.He goes on to comment on Murray's conservatism and his humour:

"Because his conservatism is imbued with an angular, self-mocking wit, which very nearly belies the down-home values being expressed, he catches readers up in the joke. We end up delighted by his dexterity, if a bit doubtful about the end to which it's been put."[19]

In 2003, Australian poetPeter Porter,reviewing Murray'sNew Collected Poems,makes a somewhat similar paradoxical assessment of Murray:

"A skewer ofpolemicruns through his work. His brilliant manipulation of language, his ability to turn words into installations of reality, is often forced to hang on an embarrassing moral sharpness. The parts we love – the Donne-like baroque – live side by side with sentiments we don't: his increasingly automatic opposition to liberalism and intellectuality. "[20]

Themes and subjects

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Twelve years after Murray's induced birth, his mother miscarried another child. She died after the doctor failed to call an ambulance. Literary critic Lawrence Bourke writes that "Murray, linking his birth to her death, traces his poetic vocation from these traumatic events, seeing in them the relegation of the rural poor by urban élites. Dispossession, relegation, and independence become major preoccupations of his poetry". Beyond this, though, his poetry is generally seen to have a nationalistic bent.The Oxford Companion to Australian Literaturewrites that:

The continuing themes of much of his poetry are those inherent in that traditional nationalistic identity – respect, even reverence, for the pioneers; the importance of the land and its shaping influence on the Australian character, down-to-earth,laconic... and based on such Bush-bred qualities asegalitarianism,practicality, straight-forwardness and independence; special respect for that Australian character in action in wartime... and a brook-no-argument preference for the rural life over the sterile and corrupting urban environment.[7]

Of his literary journalism, Bourke writes that "In a lively, frequently polemic prose style he promotes republicanism, patronage, Gaelic bardic poetry, warrior virtu, mysticism, and Aboriginal models, and attacks modernism and feminism."

Controversies

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In 1972, Murray and some other Sydney activists launched theAustralian Commonwealth Party,[8]: 144–145 and authored its unusually idealistic campaign manifesto. During the 1970s he opposed the New Poetry or "literary modernism" which emerged in Australia at that time, and was a major contributor to what is known in Australian poetry circles as "the poetry wars". "One of his complaints against post-modernism was that it removed poetry from widespread, popular readership, leaving it the domain of a small intellectual clique."[7]As American reviewerAlbert Mobiliodescribes it, Murray "waged a campaign for accessibility".[19]

In 1995, Murray became involved in the Demidenko/Darville affair.Helen Darville,an Australian writer who had won several major literary awards for her novelThe Hand That Signed the Paper,had claimed to be the daughter of a Ukrainian immigrant, though her parents were in fact English migrants. Murray said of Darville that

"She was a young girl, and her book mightn't have been the best in the world, but it was pretty damn good for a girl of her age [20 when she wrote it]. And her marketing strategy of pretending to be a Ukrainian might have been unwise, but it sure did expose the pretensions of the multicultural industry".[8]: 281 

Biographer Alexander writes that in his poem "A Deployment of Fashion", Murray linked "the attack on Darville with the wider phenomenon of attacks on those judged outcasts (fromLindy ChamberlaintoPauline Hanson) by society's fashion police, the journalists, academics and others who form opinion.[8]: 282 

In 1996, Murray became involved in a controversy about whether Australian historianManning Clarkhad received and regularly worn the medal of theOrder of Lenin.[8]: 276 

Adaptations

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In 2005,The Widower,a short film based on five poems by Murray, was released. It was directed by Kevin Lucas and written by singer and festival directorLyndon Terracini,with music byElena Kats-Chernin.Its cast includedChris HaywoodandFrances Rings.The five poems used for the film are "Evening Alone at Bunyah", "Noonday Axeman", "The Widower in the Country", "Cowyard Gates" and "The Last Hellos".Sydney Morning Heraldreviewer Paul Byrnes concludes his review with:

The film is stunningly beautiful at times, and wildly ambitious, an attempt to be both wordless and wordy, to get to the hypnotic state that poetry and music can induce while saying something meaningful about black and white attitudes to land and love. This last part, as I read Murray, is largely imposed and disruptive, trying to pin a romantic political agenda to the work that's hardly there. It makes the film too literal, too current, when it wants to lodge itself in the more mysterious part of the brain. The film still has a power – Haywood's performance is magnificent – but it never achieves a strong inner reality. It falls short of its own tall ambitions.[21]

Awards and nominations

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Works

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Poetry collections

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  • 1965:The Ilex Tree(withGeoffrey Lehmann), Canberra, ANU Press[23]
  • 1969:The Weatherboard Cathedral,Sydney, Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1972:Poems Against Economics,Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1974:Lunch and Counter Lunch,Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1976:Selected Poems: The Vernacular Republic,Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1977:Ethnic Radio,Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1982:Equanimities
  • 1982:The Vernacular Republic: Poems 1961–1981,Angus & Robertson; Edinburgh, Canongate; New York, Persea Books, 1982 and (enlarged and revised edition) Angus & Robertson, 1988[23]
  • 1983:Flowering Eucalypt in Autumn
  • 1983:The People's Otherworld: Poems
  • 1986:Selected Poems,Carcanet Press[23]
  • 1987:The Daylight Moon,Angus & Robertson, 1987; Carcanet Press 1988 and Persea Books, 1988[23]
  • 1994:Collected Poems,Port Melbourne, William Heinemann Australia[23]
  • 1989:The Idyll Wheel
  • 1990:Dog Fox FieldSydney: Angus & Robertson, 1990; Carcanet Press, 1991 and New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993[23]
  • 1991:Collected Poems,Angus & Robertson, 1991; Carcanet Press, 1991; London, Minerva, 1992 and (released asThe Rabbiter's Bounty, Collected Poems), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991[23]
  • 1992:Translations from the Natural World,Paddington: Isabella Press, 1992; Carcanet Press, 1993 and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994[23]
  • 1994:Collected Poems,Port Melbourne, William Heinemann Australia[23]
  • 1996:Late Summer Fires
  • 1996:Selected Poems,Carcanet Press
  • 1996:Subhuman Redneck Poems
  • 1997:Killing the Black Dog,Black Inc Publishing
  • 1999:New Selected Poems,Duffy & Snellgrove[23]
  • 1999:Conscious and Verbal,Duffy & Snellgrove[23]
  • 2000:An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
  • 2001:Learning Human: New Selected Poems (Poetry pleiade),Farrar, Straus and Giroux,[24]Carcanet[25]
  • 2002:Poems the Size of Photographs,Duffy & Snellgrove and Carcanet Press
  • 2002:New Collected Poems,Duffy & Snellgrove; Carcanet Press, 2003
  • 2006:The Biplane Houses,Carcanet Press.[26]Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008
  • 2010:Taller When Prone,Black Inc Publishing
  • 2011:Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir ofDepression,Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 86 pp (autobiographical)[2]
  • 2012:The Best 100 Poems of Les Murray,Black Inc Publishing[27]
  • 2014:New Selected Poems,Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • 2015:Waiting for the Past,Carcanet
  • 2015:The Tin Wash Dish,The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
  • 2015:On Bunyah,Black Inc Publishing[28]
  • 2018:Collected Poems,Black Inc Publishing
  • 2022:Continuous Creation: Last Poems,Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Collections as editor

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  • 1986:Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry(editor), Melbourne, Collins Dove, 1986 (new edition, 1991)[23]
  • 1991:The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse,Melbourne,Oxford University Press, 1986 and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, 1999[23]
  • 1994:Fivefathers, Five Australian Poets of the Pre-Academic Era,Carcanet Press[23]
  • 2005:Hell and After, Four early English-language poets of AustraliaCarcanet[23]
  • 2005:Best Australian Poems 2004,Melbourne, Black Inc.[23]
  • 2012:The Quadrant Book of Poetry 2001–2010,Sydney, Quadrant Books[23]

Verse novels

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Prose collections

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  • 1978:The Peasant Mandarin,St. Lucia, UQP[23]
  • 1984:Persistence in Folly: Selected Prose Writings,Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1984:The Australian Year: The Chronicle of our Seasons and Celebrations,Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1990:Blocks and Tackles,Angus & Robertson[23]
  • 1992:The Paperbark Tree: Selected Prose,Carcanet; Minerva, 1993[23]
  • 1999:The Quality of Sprawl: Thoughts about Australia,Duffy & Snellgrove[23]
  • 2000:A Working Forest,essays, Duffy & Snellgrove[23]
  • 2002:The Full Dress, An Encounter with the National Gallery of Australia,National Gallery of Australia[23]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^abc"Redirection page, jt to jt.net".johntranter.
  2. ^abCoetzee J. M.(29 September 2011)."The Angry Genius of Les Murray".The New York Review of Books.pp. 3, "is widely acknowledged to be the leading Australian poet of his generation".Retrieved13 September2011.
  3. ^abNational Living Treasures – Current List, Deceased, Formerly Listed,National Trust of Australia (NSW), 22 August 2014
  4. ^abMAMAMIA TEAM (12 March 2012)."100 National Living Treasures: Who's missing?".Retrieved12 May2019.
  5. ^ab"Obituary: Les Murray died on April 29th",The Economist,9 May 2019.
  6. ^Speaking to Clive James on stage at theRoyal Festival Hall,London,during 'Poetry International', 6–14 October 2000
  7. ^abcdefgWilde W., Hooton J., Andrews, B (1994).The Oxford Companion of Australian Literature2nd ed.South Melbourne,Oxford University Press
  8. ^abcdefgAlexander, Peter F.Les Murray: a Life in Progress.Oxford University Press UK, 2000
  9. ^McInerney, Stephen (202o)."Les Murray's sacramental poetics"(PDF).Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society.41:158–172.Retrieved24 April2021.
  10. ^O'Driscoll, Dennis(Spring 2005)."Les Murray, The Art of Poetry No. 89".The Paris Review.Retrieved21 March2023.
  11. ^Smith, J. Mark."A Conversation with Les Murray".Image(64).Retrieved21 March2023.
  12. ^"Australian poet Les Murray dies at 80".Australian Broadcasting Corporation.29 April 2019.Retrieved29 April2019.
  13. ^"Les Murray, Australian poet, dies aged 80".The Sydney Morning Herald.29 April 2019.Retrieved29 April2019.
  14. ^"Hermes 1962".University of Sydney Library.Retrieved30 April2019.
  15. ^ab"Clive James tribute on Les Murray's retirement",Quadrant,December 2018, p. 3.
  16. ^Fire Down BelowChaissen, Dan (2007) "Fire Down Below: The Poetry of Les Murray",The New Yorker,11 June 2007]
  17. ^"Blogposts".The Guardian.
  18. ^"Les is more".The Age.18 March 2002.
  19. ^abMobilio, Albert (12 March 2000)."Down Home Down Under".The New York Times.
  20. ^Porter, Peter (15 March 2003)."Review: New Collected Poems by Les Murray".The Guardian.
  21. ^"The Widower".The Sydney Morning Herald.30 June 2005.
  22. ^"It's an Honour – 26 January 1989".Australian Government.Retrieved8 March2008.
  23. ^abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzaaabacadaeafLes MurrayArchived13 October 2007 at theWayback Machineat The Poetry Archive website
  24. ^Learning Humanat Macmillan
  25. ^"Carcanet Press - Learning Human: New Selected Poems".carcanet.co.uk.
  26. ^"Carcanet Press - The Biplane Houses".carcanet.co.uk.
  27. ^The Best 100 Poems of Les Murray,Black Inc
  28. ^On Bunyah,Black Inc
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