Waiting for the Past - Softcover

Les Murray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784101168 ISBN 13: 9781784101169

Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2015 TS Eliot Prize. The clearly-focussed lyrics of Les Murray's Waiting for the Past are rich in topographies and the languages peculiar to them - wonga vines, lyre birds, gum trees, shrike thrushes, tallow boughs, boab trees, the octopus in Wylies Baths killed by sterilising chlorine. With the erasures the modern world brings, words, landscapes and lives descend to the Esperanto of the modern. The poet, with a salutary resistance, rejects the computer and the incursions of the levelling Modern in favour of old-fashioned typewriters, unlikely saints, lived-in places, an Easter rabbit 'edible and risen', farming in the spirit of ancestors. This is the past he waits for in scenes unmade by human carelessness, not only in his rural place but across the world. The poems speak of the unspeakable, including old age, vertigo, illness, and the durable resilience of married love.

About this title

About the Author

LES MURRAY born in 1938, grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales. Since 1971 he has made poetry his full-time career. Carcanet publish not only his poetry but also his essays and prose writings (The Paperbark Tree, 1992) and his award-winning verse novel Fredy Neptune (1998). Les Murray received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1999.

Edition details

• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784101168
• ISBN 13: 9781784101169
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 72