Les Murray Interview

On Saturday 20 May Les Murray gave a reading at Dance Base in Edinburgh, organised by Sean Bradley, editor of Thirsty Books. As I listened, I couldn’t help looking up at the glass ceiling of the studio, half expecting a burst of fireworks to cascade down from the castle in honour of the occasion. But the only fireworks were the poems, unforgettable, incandescent bursts that required no fire safety technicians.

Murray has done much to demolish the post-colonial insularity prevalent in English and American publishing, which ignores or belittles Australian writing. He has edited two collections of nineteenth and twentieth century Australian poets, and here he talks about the four writers featured in Hell and After. I met Murray at the Royal Oak pub, along with Sean Bradley and Eddie Gibbons, where we recorded the interview presented here. Click the MP3 link at the foot of the page to hear the interview.

A new collection of Les Murray’s poetry, The Biplane Houses, will be out in September, published by Carcanet Press in the UK.

Les Murray’s website is at www.lesmurray.org

Sean Bradley’s Thirsty Books website is at www.deliberatelythirsty.com/

© Jennie Renton 2006

• MP3