New Selected Poems
Published on 26. April 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-84777-167-4 (ISBN)
Description
New Selected Poems contains Les Murray's gathering from the full range of his poetry, from poems of the 1960s to work from Taller When Prone (2004) and new poems yet to appear in a collection.
Les Murray is one of the finest poets writing today; endlessly inventive, his work celebrates the world and the power of the imagination. New Selected Poems is the poet's choice of his essential works: an indispensable collection for readers who already love his poetry, and an ideal introduction for those new to it
Les Murray is one of the finest poets writing today; endlessly inventive, his work celebrates the world and the power of the imagination. New Selected Poems is the poet's choice of his essential works: an indispensable collection for readers who already love his poetry, and an ideal introduction for those new to it
Reviews / Votes
Who else but Les Murray could write a fine poem about the links between a Saxon queen and the Thames Estuary airport proposed by 'the jarl of London,/ white-polled Boris'?Like Seamus Heaney or Derek Walcott, he's an erudite backwoodsman, a boondocks dandy who brings the natural and human worlds of his native rural New South Wales onto the global stage.
A tender bruiser, the veteran Australian maestro is prodigiously gifted in matters of form and language but defiantly plebeian in outlook and instinct.
All those who cherish the voice of 'the aberrant, the original, the wounded' should seek out this cornucopian collection from a grand career.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 135 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
431 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84777-167-4 (9781847771674)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Les Murray (1938-2019) grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales.He studied at Sydney University and later worked as a translator at the Australian National University and as an officer in the Prime Minister's Department.His real vocation was poetry, however, and from 1971 he has made literature his full-time career. He was the first Australian poet to achieve international acclaim without expatriation. Murray first visited Europe in the sixties, and returned frequently to give poetry readings.
Carcanet publish his Collected Poems and his New Selected Poems (2012), as well as his individual collections, including Subhuman Redneck Poems (1996, awarded the T.S.Eliot Prize) and The Biplane Houses (2006), and his essays and prose writings in The Paperbark Tree (1992). His verse novel Fredy Neptune appeared in 1998 and in 2004 won the Mondello Prize in Italy and a major German award at the Leipzig Book Fair. He also edited The Quadrant Book of Poetry 2001-2010.
Murray had special links with Scotland, and his Scots ancestors, whilst remaining an important and distinctive Australian writer. Blake Morrison, writing in the Independent on Sunday, called Murray: 'one of the finest poets writing in English today, one of the super league which includes Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Joseph Brodsky', and C. K. Stead said of his poetry in the London Review of Books: 'It is wonderfully disciplined writing, offering what poetry and nothing else can offer, an art that arrests one's otherwise ever frustrated sense of the richness of the life that lives only for the moment'.
In 1994 Murray was nominated for the Oxford Chair of Poetry and in June 1999 he was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry at Buckingham Palace, an honour was recommended by the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes.
Les Murray has a page on the Poetry Archive website, where you can listen to audio recordings of his poetry and access other useful resources. Click here.
Carcanet publish his Collected Poems and his New Selected Poems (2012), as well as his individual collections, including Subhuman Redneck Poems (1996, awarded the T.S.Eliot Prize) and The Biplane Houses (2006), and his essays and prose writings in The Paperbark Tree (1992). His verse novel Fredy Neptune appeared in 1998 and in 2004 won the Mondello Prize in Italy and a major German award at the Leipzig Book Fair. He also edited The Quadrant Book of Poetry 2001-2010.
Murray had special links with Scotland, and his Scots ancestors, whilst remaining an important and distinctive Australian writer. Blake Morrison, writing in the Independent on Sunday, called Murray: 'one of the finest poets writing in English today, one of the super league which includes Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Joseph Brodsky', and C. K. Stead said of his poetry in the London Review of Books: 'It is wonderfully disciplined writing, offering what poetry and nothing else can offer, an art that arrests one's otherwise ever frustrated sense of the richness of the life that lives only for the moment'.
In 1994 Murray was nominated for the Oxford Chair of Poetry and in June 1999 he was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry at Buckingham Palace, an honour was recommended by the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes.
Les Murray has a page on the Poetry Archive website, where you can listen to audio recordings of his poetry and access other useful resources. Click here.
Content
The Burning Truck
Driving through Sawmill Towns
An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
Working Men
Vindaloo in Merthyr Tydfil
Incorrigible Grace
The Pure Food Act
Jozsef
Kiss of the Whip
The Broad Bean Sermon
The Mitchells
The Powerline Incarnation
Creeper Habit
Employment for the Castes in Abeyance
Driving to the Adelaide Festival 1976 via the Murray Valley Highway
The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle
The Gum Forest
Rainwater Tank
The Future
Immigrant Voyage
The Craze Field
The Grassfire Stanzas
Homage to the Launching-place
First Essay on Interest
The Fishermen at South Head
View of Sydney, Australia, from Gladesville Road Bridge
Quintets for Robert Morley
Equanimity
Shower
Two Poems in Memory of My Mother, Miriam Murray nee Arnall
Weights
Midsummer Ice
Machine Portraits with Pendant Spaceman
The Hypogeum
Second Essay on Interest: the Emu
A Retrospect of Humidity
Flowering Eucalypt in Autumn
The Chimes of Neverwhere
The Smell of Coal Smoke
Time Travel
The Dark
Flood Plains on the Coast Facing Asia
The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever
At the Aquatic Carnival
The Sleepout
Louvres
Letters to the Winner
The Milk Lorry
The Butter Factory
Roman Cage-cups
The Lake Surnames
Nocturne
Lotus Dam
Hearing Impairment
At Thunderbolt's Grave in Uralla
Poetry and Religion
May: When Bounty is Down to Persimmons and Lemons
June: The Kitchens
July: Midwinter Haircut
August: Forty Acre Ethno
September: Mercurial
November: The Misery Cord
December: Infant Among Cattle
February: Feb
The Transposition of Clermont
Cave Divers Near Mount Gambier
The Tin Wash Dish
The Inverse Transports
The Pole Barns
Glaze
Shale Country
The International Terminal
Granite Country
Dog Fox Field
Hastings River Cruise
Words of the Glassblowers
High Sugar
On Removing Spiderweb
The Assimilation of Background
Accordion Music
Ariel
Politics and Art
The Ballad of the Barbed Wire Ocean
Midnight Lake
Antarctia
Blue Roan
The Gaelic Long Tunes
Wagtail
Bats' Ultrasound
Eagle Pair
Two Dogs
Cockspur Bush
Lyrebird
Shoal
Cattle Ancestor
Mollusc
The Snake's Heat Organ
Yard Horse
The Octave of Elephants
Pigs
The Cows on Killing Day
Shellback Tick
Cell DNA
Goose to Donkey
Spermaceti
Migratory
Home Suite
The Wedding at Berrico
Crankshaft
The Family Farmers' Victory
Dead Trees in the Dam
Rock Music
The Rollover
Late Summer Fires
Corniche
Suspended Vessels
The Water Column
The Beneficiaries
Wallis Lake Estuary
On Home Beaches
On the Present Slaughter of Feral Animals
Memories of the Height-to-Weight Ratio
It Allows a Portrait in Line Scan at Fifteen
Performance
Second Childhood is Legal
Inside Ayers Rock
Contested Landscape at Forsayth
The Shield-Scales of Heraldry
The Year of the Kiln Portraits
Tympan Alley
A Lego of Driving to Sydney
Burning Want
The Last Hellos
Comete
Cotton Flannelette
The Warm Rain
Demo
Deaf Language
The Head-Spider
Dreambabwe
Amanda's Painting
One Kneeling, One Looking Down
The Margin of Difference
A Reticence
The Harleys
Aurora Prone
The Instrument
Music to Me is Like Days
A Deployment of Fashion
To Me You'll Always Be Spat
The Disorderly
A Postcard
The Internationale
Oasis City
Towards 2000
You Find You Can Leave It All
Small Flag Above the Slaughter
Downhill on Borrowed Skis
The Holy Show
A Riddle
Sound Bites
In the Costume of Andalusia
Autumn Cello
The New Hieroglyphics
The Annals of Sheer
Ernest Hemingway and the Latest Quake
The Images Alone
Rooms of the Sketch-Garden
The Tin Clothes
Judged Worth Evacuating
The Moon Man
Succour
Predawn in Health
Touchdown
The Cut-Out
Visitor
Clothing as Dwelling as Shouldered Boat
Starry Night
The Kettle's Bubble-Making Floor
Big Bang
Worker Knowledge
Jellyfish
The Great Cuisine Cleaver Dance Sonnet
Creole Exam
Hoon Hoon
A Countryman
The End of Symbol
Reclaim the Sites
The Bellwether Brush
In a Time of Cuisine
Uplands
The Pay for Fosterage
A Study of the Nude
Iguassu
Pieta Once Attributed to Cosme Tura
The Knockdown Question
The Insiders
Pop Music
The Body in Physics
Fruit Bat Colony by Day
The Climax of Factory Farming
The Poisons of Right and Left
The Top Alcohol Contender
Apsley Falls
To One Outside the Culture
Portrait of a Felspar-Coloured Cat
At University
The Young Fox
Experience
The Barcaldine Suite
The Meaning of Existence
The Aboriginal Cricketer
The Aztec Revival
The Averted
Post Mortem
The Hanging Gardens
Leaf Brims
The Statistics of Good
Twelve Poems
Travelling the British Roads
Winter Winds
The Tune on Your Mind
A Dialect History of Australia
For an Eightieth Birthday
Melbourne Pavement Coffee
Black Belt in Marital Arts
The Welter
A Levitation of Land
Through the Lattice Door
On the North Coast Line
The Nostril Songs
The Newcastle Rounds
The House Left in English
Yregami
Upright Clear Across
The Shining Slopes and Planes
The Succession
The Offshore Island
The Hoaxist
The Cool Green
Death from Exposure
Me and Je Reviens
Pressure
Church
Pastoral Sketch
The Mare out on the Road
The Blueprint
Blueprint II
Norfolk Island
Birthplace
Lateral Dimensions
Bright Lights on Earth
Panic Attack
Sunday on a Country River
Ripe in the Arbours of the Nose
Industrial Relations
From a Tourist Journal
Definitions
The Conversations
The Double Diamond
As Country Was Slow
Midi
Observing the Mute Cat
Nursing Home
Fame
Cattle-Hoof Hardpan
Phone Canvass
Science Fiction
Brown Suits
Southern Hemisphere Garden
The Suspect Corpse
Eucalypts in Exile
Cherries from Young
Croc
High-speed Bird
The Cowladder Stanzas
The Farm Terraces
Visiting Geneva
The Bronze Bull
Port Jackson Greaseproof Rose
The Springfields
Rugby Wheels
A Frequent Flyer Proposes a Name
Hesiod on Bushfire
The Blame
Daylight Cloth
The Mirrorball
Infinite Anthology
Manuscript Roundel
Natal Grass
The Black Beaches
Inspecting the Rivermouth
High Rise
Nuclear Family Bees
When Two Per Cent Were Students
I Wrote A Little Haiku
West Coast Township
Money and the Flying Horses
Sun Taiko
Child Logic
Powder of Light
Index of First Lines
Index of Titles
Driving through Sawmill Towns
An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
Working Men
Vindaloo in Merthyr Tydfil
Incorrigible Grace
The Pure Food Act
Jozsef
Kiss of the Whip
The Broad Bean Sermon
The Mitchells
The Powerline Incarnation
Creeper Habit
Employment for the Castes in Abeyance
Driving to the Adelaide Festival 1976 via the Murray Valley Highway
The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle
The Gum Forest
Rainwater Tank
The Future
Immigrant Voyage
The Craze Field
The Grassfire Stanzas
Homage to the Launching-place
First Essay on Interest
The Fishermen at South Head
View of Sydney, Australia, from Gladesville Road Bridge
Quintets for Robert Morley
Equanimity
Shower
Two Poems in Memory of My Mother, Miriam Murray nee Arnall
Weights
Midsummer Ice
Machine Portraits with Pendant Spaceman
The Hypogeum
Second Essay on Interest: the Emu
A Retrospect of Humidity
Flowering Eucalypt in Autumn
The Chimes of Neverwhere
The Smell of Coal Smoke
Time Travel
The Dark
Flood Plains on the Coast Facing Asia
The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever
At the Aquatic Carnival
The Sleepout
Louvres
Letters to the Winner
The Milk Lorry
The Butter Factory
Roman Cage-cups
The Lake Surnames
Nocturne
Lotus Dam
Hearing Impairment
At Thunderbolt's Grave in Uralla
Poetry and Religion
May: When Bounty is Down to Persimmons and Lemons
June: The Kitchens
July: Midwinter Haircut
August: Forty Acre Ethno
September: Mercurial
November: The Misery Cord
December: Infant Among Cattle
February: Feb
The Transposition of Clermont
Cave Divers Near Mount Gambier
The Tin Wash Dish
The Inverse Transports
The Pole Barns
Glaze
Shale Country
The International Terminal
Granite Country
Dog Fox Field
Hastings River Cruise
Words of the Glassblowers
High Sugar
On Removing Spiderweb
The Assimilation of Background
Accordion Music
Ariel
Politics and Art
The Ballad of the Barbed Wire Ocean
Midnight Lake
Antarctia
Blue Roan
The Gaelic Long Tunes
Wagtail
Bats' Ultrasound
Eagle Pair
Two Dogs
Cockspur Bush
Lyrebird
Shoal
Cattle Ancestor
Mollusc
The Snake's Heat Organ
Yard Horse
The Octave of Elephants
Pigs
The Cows on Killing Day
Shellback Tick
Cell DNA
Goose to Donkey
Spermaceti
Migratory
Home Suite
The Wedding at Berrico
Crankshaft
The Family Farmers' Victory
Dead Trees in the Dam
Rock Music
The Rollover
Late Summer Fires
Corniche
Suspended Vessels
The Water Column
The Beneficiaries
Wallis Lake Estuary
On Home Beaches
On the Present Slaughter of Feral Animals
Memories of the Height-to-Weight Ratio
It Allows a Portrait in Line Scan at Fifteen
Performance
Second Childhood is Legal
Inside Ayers Rock
Contested Landscape at Forsayth
The Shield-Scales of Heraldry
The Year of the Kiln Portraits
Tympan Alley
A Lego of Driving to Sydney
Burning Want
The Last Hellos
Comete
Cotton Flannelette
The Warm Rain
Demo
Deaf Language
The Head-Spider
Dreambabwe
Amanda's Painting
One Kneeling, One Looking Down
The Margin of Difference
A Reticence
The Harleys
Aurora Prone
The Instrument
Music to Me is Like Days
A Deployment of Fashion
To Me You'll Always Be Spat
The Disorderly
A Postcard
The Internationale
Oasis City
Towards 2000
You Find You Can Leave It All
Small Flag Above the Slaughter
Downhill on Borrowed Skis
The Holy Show
A Riddle
Sound Bites
In the Costume of Andalusia
Autumn Cello
The New Hieroglyphics
The Annals of Sheer
Ernest Hemingway and the Latest Quake
The Images Alone
Rooms of the Sketch-Garden
The Tin Clothes
Judged Worth Evacuating
The Moon Man
Succour
Predawn in Health
Touchdown
The Cut-Out
Visitor
Clothing as Dwelling as Shouldered Boat
Starry Night
The Kettle's Bubble-Making Floor
Big Bang
Worker Knowledge
Jellyfish
The Great Cuisine Cleaver Dance Sonnet
Creole Exam
Hoon Hoon
A Countryman
The End of Symbol
Reclaim the Sites
The Bellwether Brush
In a Time of Cuisine
Uplands
The Pay for Fosterage
A Study of the Nude
Iguassu
Pieta Once Attributed to Cosme Tura
The Knockdown Question
The Insiders
Pop Music
The Body in Physics
Fruit Bat Colony by Day
The Climax of Factory Farming
The Poisons of Right and Left
The Top Alcohol Contender
Apsley Falls
To One Outside the Culture
Portrait of a Felspar-Coloured Cat
At University
The Young Fox
Experience
The Barcaldine Suite
The Meaning of Existence
The Aboriginal Cricketer
The Aztec Revival
The Averted
Post Mortem
The Hanging Gardens
Leaf Brims
The Statistics of Good
Twelve Poems
Travelling the British Roads
Winter Winds
The Tune on Your Mind
A Dialect History of Australia
For an Eightieth Birthday
Melbourne Pavement Coffee
Black Belt in Marital Arts
The Welter
A Levitation of Land
Through the Lattice Door
On the North Coast Line
The Nostril Songs
The Newcastle Rounds
The House Left in English
Yregami
Upright Clear Across
The Shining Slopes and Planes
The Succession
The Offshore Island
The Hoaxist
The Cool Green
Death from Exposure
Me and Je Reviens
Pressure
Church
Pastoral Sketch
The Mare out on the Road
The Blueprint
Blueprint II
Norfolk Island
Birthplace
Lateral Dimensions
Bright Lights on Earth
Panic Attack
Sunday on a Country River
Ripe in the Arbours of the Nose
Industrial Relations
From a Tourist Journal
Definitions
The Conversations
The Double Diamond
As Country Was Slow
Midi
Observing the Mute Cat
Nursing Home
Fame
Cattle-Hoof Hardpan
Phone Canvass
Science Fiction
Brown Suits
Southern Hemisphere Garden
The Suspect Corpse
Eucalypts in Exile
Cherries from Young
Croc
High-speed Bird
The Cowladder Stanzas
The Farm Terraces
Visiting Geneva
The Bronze Bull
Port Jackson Greaseproof Rose
The Springfields
Rugby Wheels
A Frequent Flyer Proposes a Name
Hesiod on Bushfire
The Blame
Daylight Cloth
The Mirrorball
Infinite Anthology
Manuscript Roundel
Natal Grass
The Black Beaches
Inspecting the Rivermouth
High Rise
Nuclear Family Bees
When Two Per Cent Were Students
I Wrote A Little Haiku
West Coast Township
Money and the Flying Horses
Sun Taiko
Child Logic
Powder of Light
Index of First Lines
Index of Titles