Les Murray, arguably Australia’s greatest poet and the man who was frequently tipped to be Australia’s next Nobel laureate, has died. He was 80. He is survived by his five children and wife, Valerie.
Murray was often referred to as the Bard of Bunyah in central New South Wales, which was where his great-great-grandfather first bought land in the 1840s. Murray lived there as a child with his grandparents.
His first book — The Ilex Tree, written with Geoffrey Lehmann — was published in 1965; his most recent new collection was Waiting for the Past in 2015, the same year his collection of poems that focus on his home territory, On Bunyah, came out. In between have appeared such acclaimed works as his verse novel, Fredy Neptune, Translations from the Natural World, Subhuman Redneck Poems and Poems the Size of Photographs.
Novelist and poet David Malouf once described Murray as a fantastic poet. ‘‘I think the range of Les’ poetry, the extraordinary linguistic quality of it, puts him in a class of people who have won (the Nobel) certainly with someone like Seamus Heaney and probably higher than that of some of the other English-speaking people who have already received it.’’
The localness of some of Murray’s poetry was in no way inhibiting.
Award-winning Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe described Murray’s death as “Australia’s loss”.
“Of all our poets, he probably had the greatest engagement with Australian history, landscape and changing environment,” he said.
Novelist and poet Goldsworthy said Murray was one of the greatest poets in the world and it was a disgrace he didn’t win the Nobel. “Brodsky, Walcott, Heaney – they all dipped their lids to Les Murray.”
