Carcanet Press - Taller When Prone

Description
Excerpt
Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews

Thinking up names
for a lofty farm: High Wallet,
Cow Terraces, Fogsheep,
Rainside, Helmet Brush,
Tipcamber, Dingo Leap...

from 'the Cowladder Stanzas'

Taller When Prone has at its heart Les Murray's celebrations of the rural world in Australia and elsewhere, evoked with a deep understanding of landscapes, and the seasons, working lives and languages that have shaped them. Stories and songs, fragments of conversations, memories and satire comprise this varied, habitable world. In Murray's vigorous and sinuous language, 'song and story are pixels / in a mirrorball', reflecting back to us endless possibilities.

There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures and yet so intimate and conversational. Derek Walcott

Contents

From a Tourist Journal
Bluelookout Mountain
The Sharman Drum
The Toppled Head
Defi nitions
The Conversations
The Double Diamond
As Country Was Slow
The Death of Isaac Nathan, 1864
The Filo Soles
Midi
Observing the Mute Cat
Buttress on a High Cutting
Ovoids
Nursing Home
Fame
Cattle-Hoof Hardpan
Phone Canvass
King Lear Had Alzheimer’s
Science Fiction
Atlantic Pavements
Refusing Saul’s Armour
Our Dip in the Rift Valley
Brown Suits
Southern Hemisphere Garden
Two Scapes
The Suspect Corpse
Eucalypts in Exile
The Monroe Survey
Reading by Starlight
Cherries from Young
Lunar Eclipse
Croc
High-speed Bird
The Cowladder Stanzas
The Farm Terraces
The Drizzle of Chefs’ Knives
The Sphere
The Submerged Chute of Bass Strait
Visiting Geneva
The Bronze Bull
Port Jackson Greaseproof Rose
The Springfi elds
Rugby Wheels
A Frequent Flyer Proposes a Name
Hesiod on Bushfire
The Blame
Singing Tour in Vietnam
Midwinter Kangaroo Nests
The 41st Year of 1968
Daylight Cloth
The Mirrorball
Infi nite Anthology
Wrecked Birds
At the Opera
The Relative Gold
The Cartoonist
Manuscript Roundel
Natal Grass
The Fallen Golfer
The Man in the White Bay Hotel
Winding Up at the Bootmaker’s
Acknowledgements

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 worked as a translator at the Australian National University and as an officer in the Prime Minister's ... read more

Awards won by Les Murray , 1994 nomination for the Oxford Chair of Poetry. , 1996 T.S. Eliot Prize for the best collection (Subhuman Redneck Poems). , 1999 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Praise for Les Murray Les Murray's Taller When Prone shows a poetic master nimbly and lyrically at work. Now seventy-two, Murray writes with the bigness of soul of a person twice his age. This collection adds another chuckie to the cairn of a remarkable personal achievement. A Nobel Prize for that man, please. - Robert Crawford, TLS Books Of The Year 2010 'Richly prolific, profoundly plebeian, full of wit, learning and dexterity, Australia's greatest living poet' Boyd Tonkin 'It would be as myopic to regard Mr Murray as an Australian poet as to call Yeats an Irishman. He is, quite simply, the one by whom the language lives.' Joseph Brodsky. 'There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures, and yet so intimate and conversational.' Derek Walcott, The New Republic '...the true spokesman of the whole nation, the custodian of its soul... the most accomplished poet in Australia today, and among the half dozen most successful poets in the English language...' Peter Porter 'perhaps the most naturally gifted poet of his generation' David Malouf 'It should hardly need saying that merely to mention Les Murray is to heighten the tone of the discourse.' Clive James, TLS '...a waterfall of a poet, satisfying as a draught of Coonawarra Cabernet -- a year's discovery.' Martin Dodsworth, Guardian 'Les Murray is writing poetry with a lyric grandeur and verbal resourcefulness that are reassuring.' Mark Strand 'Les Murray is a major Australian poet of our time, full stop.' Douglas Dunn '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.' C.K.Stead, London Review of Books 'Critics speak of him as one of the finest poets writing in English today, one of the superleague which includes Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Joseph Brodsky.' Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday

Les Murray's Taller When Prone shows a poetic master nimbly and lyrically at work. read more

It would be perverse to ignore a new book of poems by Les Murray, Australia's finest. read more

Les Murray's poetry- rooted in rural Australia, yet intercontinental in scale and detail- at first apears in radical contrast to Jo Shapcott's very English quietness of survival. read more

Taller When Prone (Carcanet) is the second collection of poems from Les Murray since the publication of his Collected Poems ...As read more

A new collection reminds Paul Batchelor why Les Murray is a necessary poet. read more

Les Murray's poetry- rooted in rural Australia, yet intercontinental in scale and detail- at first apears in radical contrast to Jo Shapcott's very English quietness of survival. read more

Taller When Prone (Carcanet) is the second collection of poems from Les Murray since the publication of his Collected Poems ...As read more

There's an art to the Australian poet's artlessness. read more

Quote of the Day ...where the usual publisher's list might be like the contents of a bookshop, Carcanet's was like the contents of a private library. More than that, over the years, the Carcanet list has grown without any dilution of seriousness, so that looking at it now is like being invited to read the contents of a poet's library. Robert Nye Home Authors Titles Paperback Hardback Limited Edition Journal CD eBook Imprints Aspects of Portugal Audio Books Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Carcanet Poetry Comma Press FyfieldBooks Lintott Press Lives and Letters Northern House OxfordPoets PN Review Sheep Meadow Press Information About Us Academic Enquiries Authors For Events Catalogue Contact Us Copyright and Permissions Join Our Mailing List Opportunities at Carcanet Press Enquiries PN Review Shopping Guide Stocklist Submission Guidelines Trade Information Resources Audio Interviews Gallery Reviews Video
Book Search Search > advanced search Subscribe to our mailing list Submit
Taller When Prone Les Murray RRP: GBP£ 9.95 Discount: 10% You Save: GBP£ 0.99 Price: GBP£ 8.96 Available Paperback ISBN: 978 1 847771 23 0 Categories: 21st Century, Australian, Catholic Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Published: November 2010 216 x 135 mm 72 pages Publisher: Carcanet Press Also available in: eBook (EPUB), eBook (Kindle) Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews Thinking up names for a lofty farm: High Wallet, Cow Terraces, Fogsheep, Rainside, Helmet Brush, Tipcamber, Dingo Leap... from 'the Cowladder Stanzas' Taller When Prone has at its heart Les Murray's celebrations of the rural world in Australia and elsewhere, evoked with a deep understanding of landscapes, and the seasons, working lives and languages that have shaped them. Stories and songs, fragments of conversations, memories and satire comprise this varied, habitable world. In Murray's vigorous and sinuous language, 'song and story are pixels / in a mirrorball', reflecting back to us endless possibilities. There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures and yet so intimate and conversational. Derek Walcott Contents From a Tourist Journal Bluelookout Mountain The Sharman Drum The Toppled Head Defi nitions The Conversations The Double Diamond As Country Was Slow The Death of Isaac Nathan, 1864 The Filo Soles Midi Observing the Mute Cat Buttress on a High Cutting Ovoids Nursing Home Fame Cattle-Hoof Hardpan Phone Canvass King Lear Had Alzheimer’s Science Fiction Atlantic Pavements Refusing Saul’s Armour Our Dip in the Rift Valley Brown Suits Southern Hemisphere Garden Two Scapes The Suspect Corpse Eucalypts in Exile The Monroe Survey Reading by Starlight Cherries from Young Lunar Eclipse Croc High-speed Bird The Cowladder Stanzas The Farm Terraces The Drizzle of Chefs’ Knives The Sphere The Submerged Chute of Bass Strait Visiting Geneva The Bronze Bull Port Jackson Greaseproof Rose The Springfi elds Rugby Wheels A Frequent Flyer Proposes a Name Hesiod on Bushfire The Blame Singing Tour in Vietnam Midwinter Kangaroo Nests The 41st Year of 1968 Daylight Cloth The Mirrorball Infi nite Anthology Wrecked Birds At the Opera The Relative Gold The Cartoonist Manuscript Roundel Natal Grass The Fallen Golfer The Man in the White Bay Hotel Winding Up at the Bootmaker’s Acknowledgements 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 worked as a translator at the Australian National University and as an officer in the Prime Minister's ... read more Awards won by Les Murray , 1994 nomination for the Oxford Chair of Poetry. , 1996 T.S. Eliot Prize for the best collection (Subhuman Redneck Poems). , 1999 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Praise for Les Murray Les Murray's Taller When Prone shows a poetic master nimbly and lyrically at work. Now seventy-two, Murray writes with the bigness of soul of a person twice his age. This collection adds another chuckie to the cairn of a remarkable personal achievement. A Nobel Prize for that man, please. - Robert Crawford, TLS Books Of The Year 2010 'Richly prolific, profoundly plebeian, full of wit, learning and dexterity, Australia's greatest living poet' Boyd Tonkin 'It would be as myopic to regard Mr Murray as an Australian poet as to call Yeats an Irishman. He is, quite simply, the one by whom the language lives.' Joseph Brodsky. 'There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures, and yet so intimate and conversational.' Derek Walcott, The New Republic '...the true spokesman of the whole nation, the custodian of its soul... the most accomplished poet in Australia today, and among the half dozen most successful poets in the English language...' Peter Porter 'perhaps the most naturally gifted poet of his generation' David Malouf 'It should hardly need saying that merely to mention Les Murray is to heighten the tone of the discourse.' Clive James, TLS '...a waterfall of a poet, satisfying as a draught of Coonawarra Cabernet -- a year's discovery.' Martin Dodsworth, Guardian 'Les Murray is writing poetry with a lyric grandeur and verbal resourcefulness that are reassuring.' Mark Strand 'Les Murray is a major Australian poet of our time, full stop.' Douglas Dunn '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.' C.K.Stead, London Review of Books 'Critics speak of him as one of the finest poets writing in English today, one of the superleague which includes Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and Joseph Brodsky.' Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday Les Murray's Taller When Prone shows a poetic master nimbly and lyrically at work. read more It would be perverse to ignore a new book of poems by Les Murray, Australia's finest. read more Les Murray's poetry- rooted in rural Australia, yet intercontinental in scale and detail- at first apears in radical contrast to Jo Shapcott's very English quietness of survival. read more Taller When Prone (Carcanet) is the second collection of poems from Les Murray since the publication of his Collected Poems ...As read more A new collection reminds Paul Batchelor why Les Murray is a necessary poet. read more Les Murray's poetry- rooted in rural Australia, yet intercontinental in scale and detail- at first apears in radical contrast to Jo Shapcott's very English quietness of survival. read more Taller When Prone (Carcanet) is the second collection of poems from Les Murray since the publication of his Collected Poems ...As read more There's an art to the Australian poet's artlessness. read more	Share this... Quick Links Aspects of Portugal Audio Books Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Carcanet Poetry Comma Press FyfieldBooks Lintott Press Lives and Letters OxfordPoets PN Review Sheep Meadow Press The Carcanet Blog Book Launch: Distance and Memory by Peter Davidson read more Sam Ruddock: Bibliodiversity read more Lucy Burnett: An Eco-poetic Sensibility read more Chris Beckett: Looking for Abebe, the cook's son read more Richard Price: A Month in Portugal read more Let's Gimbal! read more
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
Privacy Statement Sitemap RSS Feeds Home Authors Titles Imprints Information Resources This website ©2000-2013 Carcanet Press Ltd