Despite some unfortunate political rows, the generous spirit of the man and his poems shone through his life and work
It’s not a simple portrait when painted from this angle: a complex person, a brilliant poet with a genius for language, with some terrible politics. But it’s still a deeply admiring picture of Les Murray, whose poetry looked out to the world at large, a broader world that he was always conscious of but was never going to bend to. The world could come to Bunyah, New South Wales, as he went out and read his poems to an international audience.
A traveller who could bring a “bat’s ultrasound” right into the room (via his poem of that name), Les had one of the most fervent and avid intellects I have encountered. Although university educated, he was a fierce autodidact, whose facility for foreign languages informed the etymological plays and departures of his poetry. Les told me he didn’t trust the avant-garde poets of anywhere or any time, but strangely, he shared more in common with many experimentalists than with the more conservative traditionalists who lionise him. He could show empathy for autism and different ways of perceiving the world with such linguistic intensity that his audience found themselves wandering alongside him around his chosen locales. He had a way of drawing you with him, of making a poem feel like a personal exchange in the paddock.
Related: Les Murray, poet and 'gentle titan of Australian letters', dies aged 80
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