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Conscious and Verbal

ISBN-13: 9781857544534
Publisher: CARCANET PRESS
Imprint: CARCANET PRESS
By Les A. Murray
Price: AUD $17.99
Stock: 0 in stock
Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
Local release date: 27/12/1999
Format: Paperback (216.00mm X 135.00mm) 96 pages Weight: 134g
Categories: Poetry by individual poets [DCF]

Description
Author Biography
Sales Points
Google Preview: Conscious and Verbal is Les Murray's first book since his celebrated verse novel Fredy Neptune, described by Peter Porter in the Independent as, 'a true verse novel, not just a tour de force but a sustained piece of storytelling in poetry.' Conscious and Verbal is full of stories, too: political stories as in the harrowing 'At the Swamping of Categories'; love stories, epithalamia and celebrations; curious 'Sound Bites'; and the wonderfully fluid rhythmic surprise of poems such as 'Music to Me is Like Days'. The story behind the title poem has to do with the nearly fatal illness of the poet. When he was declared 'conscious and verbal' it was clear that he would survive, and the work he has produced since then he has described as 'posthumous', illuminated by various previously unseen and` wonderfully shimmering lights. He has always had a vision of how things are; now he sees how they might be. Derek Walcott says, 'There is no poetry in the English language so rooted in its sacredness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures, and yet so intimate and conversational.'; Les Murray was born in 1938 and grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales, where he still lives. He studied at Sydney University and later became a translator at the Australian National University and as an officer in the Prime Minister's Department. His real vocation was poetry and from 1971 he has made literature his full-time career. His first visit to Europe was in the sixties and since then he has returned frequently delighting audiences with his relaxed and excellent readings. He has special links with Scotland, and Scots ancestors, whilst remaining an important and distinctive Australian writer. Blake Morrison, writing in the Independent on Sunday wrote 'Critics speak of him as 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 in the London Review of Books said of his poetry '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'.; The author is the winner of the Queen's Gold Medal in 1999.; Google Preview content