Leslie Allan Murray AO (1938 - 2019)

formative years

Leslie Allan "Les" Murray was born on 17th October 1938 in Nabiac, 30 kilometres south of Taree on the Mid North Coast, New South Wales, Australia and grew up in the neighbouring district of Bunyah, in the mountains 30 kilometres to the south west. He was the eldest child of Cecil Murray and Miriam Arnall. Twelve years after Les' induced birth, his mother miscarried and, after the doctor failed to call an ambulance, died. Les attended primary and early high school in Nabiac and then attended Taree High School.

In 1957 he began study at the University of Sydney in the Faculty of Arts and joined the Royal Australian Navy Reserve to obtain a small income.

marriage and family

Les became a Roman Catholic when he married Budapest-born fellow-student Valerie Morelli in 1962. They lived in Wales and Scotland and travelled in Europe for over a year in the late 1960s. They have five children.

Les purchased back part of the family home in 1975 and visited there intermittently until 1985, when he and his family returned to live there permanently.

literary career

Les was a prolific and pre-eminent Australian poet

In 1971, Les resigned from his translator position at the Australian National University and public service role in Canberra to write poetry full-time.

His Selected Poems was published by Angus & Robertson in 1976 to both praise and criticism. This led to a fourteen-year tenure as poetry editor for Angus & Robertson (1976–90). In 1991 he became literary editor of Quadrant. He has edited several anthologies, including the Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry; first published in 1986, it proved popular with readers, resulting in a second edition being published in 1991. In 2007, Dan Chiasson wrote in The New Yorker that Les was "now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading English-language poets".^[1] Les was talked of as a possible winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Les published around 30 volumes of poetry and is often called Australia's Bush-bard. 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".^[2]

honours and awards

• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for The People's Other World, 1984
• Creative Arts Fellowship, 1989
• Officer of the Order of Australia (OA) for services to Australian literature, 1989^[3]
• Grace Leven Prize for Poetry for Dog Fox Field, 1990
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for Translations from the Natural World, 1993
• Petrarca-Preis (Petrarch Prize), 1995
• T S Eliot Prize for Subhuman Redneck Poems, 1996
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 1998
• shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize for Learning Human, 2001
• shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize for Conscious & Verbal, 2002
• Premio Mondello, Italy for Fredy Neptune, 2005

Survived by Valerie and their five children, Les Murray OA passed away, aged 80 years, on 29th April 2019 in a nursing home in Taree. ^[4]

Sources

1. ↑ Fire Down Below, the poetry of Les Murray; by Dan Chiasson June 4, 2007; accessed 1 May 2019
2. ↑ Wilde W, Hooton J, Andrews, B (1994). The Oxford Companion of Australian Literature 2nd ed. South Melbourne, Oxford University Press; accessed 1 May 2019
3. ↑ Australian Honours: Order of Australia; accessed 1 May 2019
4. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald: Australian poet Les Murray dies aged 80, by Jason Steger and Broede Carmody, April 29, 2019; accessed 1 May 2019

See also

• Wikipedia profile: Les Murray.