Les Murray in Sydney

Sydney Writers' Festival, Friday May 21. Interviewed by Michael Duffy.

Event Review by Sophie Gyles

25 May 2010

5:51pm Tuesday, 25th May 2010

Fat drops of rain fall from a slate sky; on Hickson Road, figures scamper between awnings. Underfoot, camphor leaves - the recent victims of autumn -eddy and drift. Inside the Sydney Theatre, a large, balding middle-aged man sits awkwardly on a red leather chair; beyond him it's a sea of darkness. Look closely enough though and you'll make out faces. There's a captive audience out there, waiting to hear from arguably Australia's most successful living poet.
Having spent his life on the land, Les Murray seems out of place beside the yachts, designer hairdressers and waterfront properties of Walsh Bay where the Sydney Writer's Festival takes place. This session is supposed to be a reading and discussion of his latest work, but it's soon obvious a fireside chat with an old friend is what we're getting: "You look at me, and say, is that ever going to be in fashion?" he laughs.
It's true. Lack of pretension is Murray's hallmark - both in his writing and his person. It's ironic then that the man's had such success, publishing 30 books, winning the TS Eliot Prize, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and the Mondello Prize. But it's not his successes he wants to talk about. Asked about growing up as the only child of a rural working class family, Murray grins at the urban crowd: "You wouldn't want to be middle class. I soon realised it was an advantage [to grow up poor], not a disadvantage." A generous laugh breaks down the usual distance between a poet and his audience.
Murray's poems are filled with the landscape of his childhood and current home, the rural hinterland of the NSW North Coast. Images of life on his property at Bunyah leak from his poems as he reads from his latest collection, Taller when Prone, entrancing us with lines that hum long after he's finished speaking.
Loveable singly or unmarshalled / they are merciless in a gang. (Eycalypts in Exile)
Or this four line poem, Cattle-Hoof Hardpan:
Trees from modern times don't bear / but the old China pear / still standing in the soil / of 1880s rains fruit.
His affinity with the country is clear. Asked who he hopes reads his poems, Murray distances himself from the "culture classes", saying with a wry smile, "I kind of hope they'll be found by country people first, but I'm not racist about it."
Murray dedicates all his books To the glory of God. A Roman Catholic convert, he says of his faith, "It's there under everything I write." But his poetry is not specifically religious: "It's one of the hardest kinds of poetry to write, because it's intensely private and unfashionable."
The only book he didn't dedicate To the glory of God, is Killing the Black Dog, an account of his long-term struggle with depression. That book is dedicated To the need of God. He says he could only write poetry during his darkest years, struggling to find the energy for essays and other prose. Nevertheless, it was a fruitful period; he wrote his epic 11,000 word prose poem, Fredy Neptune, about a man who has lost his sense of touch.
His lines are imbued with nostalgia and a uniquely Australian voice. There are glimpses of hope about the future, but ultimately, there's a distinct cynicism about anything that breaks the relationship between the individual and the mob, the human and the animal, the land, the voice and its words.
In Science Fiction he laments:
phone and videophone / are almost worse / .... those we reach / but can never touch / the nothing that can hurt us / how lovely and terrible / and lonely is this.
He tells us he has a touch of Asperger's about him, and you can see it in his avarice for a growing lexicon. He works one day a month with the Macquarie Dictionary, and says he believes the Australian language is continuing to blossom. The words "festy" and "ranga" are current favourites. Trivia is another love: "A fact is a compact faith."
Asked how to write about Australia for an international audience, Murray says the challenge is to write about a place with little conflict.
"There's not enough blood. That's the trouble. How do you celebrate peace? People find it boring. I don't. I write about it."
Celebrating all that is beautiful about the land and its people, there is something redemptive about Murray's work. There is a stillness about his words that sings to the heart with an unusual honesty. If this is his work's legacy, then one hopes it catches.
Les Murray has published some 30 books in Australia, including ‘Killing the Black Dog', ‘Fredy Neptune' and ‘The Biplane Houses'. His work has been translated into 18 languages. In 1996 he was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize, in 1999 the Queen's Gold Medal for poetry, and in 2009 the Mondello Prize. His most recent collection of poetry is ‘Taller When Prone'.

Café

Les Murray in Sydney