AustLit

‘Studying Les Murray’s poetry provides students the opportunity to recognize important contexts for Australians’ connection to an often daunting land, for the tensions between city and country perceptions, and for contemporary manifestations of clashing Indigenous and postcolonial identities. Thus, selecting Murray as a representative of Australian poetry seems clear for many, especially those who now consider him to be Australia’s preeminent poet-although there are some for whom he is not their first choice, for distinctive reasons. Elleke Boehmer noted in 1995 that Murray is ‘Australia’s self-elected bard of the demonic’ (218), and in 2007 Dan Chiasson argued that he ‘is now routinely mentioned among three or four leading English-language poets’ (136). In his long career, he has had published over forty books of poetry and essays. His work has garnered many literary awards, including the coveted T.S. Eliot Prize in 1996 and a Queens’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1998. (Introduction)