Les Murray (poet)

Murray died on 29 April 2019 at a Taree, New South Wales nursing home at the age of 80.

Murray retired as literary editor of Quadrant in late 2018 for health reasons.

In 2007, Dan Chiasson wrote in The New Yorker that Murray was "now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading English-language poets". Murray was talked of as a possible winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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-festival director, Lyndon Terracini, with music by Elena Kats-Chernin. Its cast included Chris Haywood and Frances 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 Herald reviewer Paul Byrnes concludes his review with:

In 2003, Australian poet Peter Porter, reviewing Murray's New Collected Poems, makes a somewhat similar paradoxical assessment of Murray:

Murray published around 30 volumes of poetry and is often called Australia's bush-bard. The academic David McCooey described Murray in 2002 as "a traditional poet whose work is radically original". 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".

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". He was rated in 1997 by the National Trust of Australia as one of the 100 Australian Living Treasures.

In 1996, Murray became involved in a controversy about whether Australian historian Manning Clark had received and regularly worn the medal of the Order of Lenin (p 276).

In 1995, Murray became involved in the Demidenko/Darville affair. Helen Darville, an Australian writer who had won several major literary awards for her novel The 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

While admiring Murray's linguistic skill and poetic achievement, poet John 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 the Vernacular Republic full of rich and complex poetry."

In 1972, Murray and some other Sydney activists launched the Australian Commonwealth Party, 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". As American reviewer Albert Mobilio describes it, Murray "waged a campaign for accessibility".

In 1971, Murray resigned from his "respectable cover occupations" of translator and public servant in Canberra (1970) to 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.

When Murray was a student at the University of Sydney he was the editor of Hermes, with Geoffrey Lehmann (1962). Murray edited the magazine Poetry Australia (1973–79). During his tenure as poetry editor for Angus & Robertson (1976–90) he was responsible for publishing the first book of poetry by Philip Hodgins. In 1991 Murray became literary editor of Quadrant. He edited several anthologies, including the Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry. First published in 1986, a second edition was published in 1991. It interprets religion loosely and includes the work of many of poets, such A. D. Hope, Judith Wright, Rosemary Dobson, Kevin Hart, Bruce Dawe, and himself. The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse was most recently re-issued in 1996.

In 1961 The Bulletin published one of Murray's poems. He developed an interest in ancient and modern languages, and eventually qualified to become a professional translator at the Australian National University (where he was employed from 1963 to 1967). During his studies he met other poets and writers such as Geoffrey Lehmann, Bob Ellis, Clive James and Lex Banning as well as future political journalists Laurie Oakes and Mungo McCallum Jr. Between times, he hitch-hiked around Australia. Murray lived for several months at a Sydney Push household at Milsons Point, where he read Virgil's Eclogues at the suggestion of his host, Brian Jenkins.

Murray returned to undergraduate studies in the 1960s. He converted to Roman Catholicism when he married Budapest-born fellow-student Valerie Morelli in 1962. His poetry frequently refers to Catholic themes. The couple lived in Wales and Scotland and travelled in Europe for over a year in the late 1960s. They had five children together.

In 1957 Murray entered the University of Sydney in the Faculty of Arts and joined the Royal Australian Navy Reserve to obtain a small income. Speaking about this time to Clive James he has said:

Leslie Allan Murray AO (17 October 1938 – 29 April 2019) was an Australian poet, anthologist, and critic. His career spanned over 40 years and he published nearly 30 volumes of poetry as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings.