Carcanet Press - The Biplane Houses

Description
Excerpt
Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews

Having tacked loose tin panels
of the car shed together
Peter the carpenter walks straight up
the ladder, no hands,
and buttons down lapels of the roof.

from 'The Shining Slopes and Planes'

In his first new volume of poems since Poems the Size of Photographs (2002), Les Murray celebrates the grace and variousness of the world with an unfailing abundance of imagination and linguistic energy. Here is a poet writing at the height of his powers, capturing the richness of life in story-poems, word-plays, history- and myth-makings, aphoristic fragments and domestic portraits, recollections of rural Australia and moments of urban experience. Houses - as home, landscape and metaphor - form a many-sided theme of the book, and as ever Murray's evocation of the natural world is unparalleled in its inventiveness.

'A poet of fantastic power and range... All human life is bound within Murray's poetry.' - The Observer

'Les Murray is one of the finest poets in whom the English language is now at work.' - Times Literary Supplement

Contents:

The Averted
Early Summer Hail with Rhymes in O
Post Mortem
The Hanging Gardens
Leaf Brims
Airscapes
The Statistics of Good
Twelve Poems
Too Often Round the Galleries
Travelling the British Roads
The Test
The Kitchen Grammars
Winter Winds
The Tune on Your Mind
The Domain of the Octopus
A Dialect History of Australia
For an Eightieth Birthday
On the Central Coast Line
Melbourne Pavement Coffee
Photographing Aspiration
Black Belt in Marital Arts
The Welter
A Levitation of Land
Through the Lattice Door
On the North Coast Line
The Nostril Songs
For a Convert in Boston
The Newcastle Rounds
The House Left in English
Yregami
Upright Clear Across
Ghost Story
The Shining Slopes and Planes
The Succession
A Stampede of the Sacrifice
The Offshore Island
An Acrophobe’s Dragon
As Night-Dwelling Winter Approaches
The Hoaxist
Barker Unchained
The Cool Green
Lifestyle
Death from Exposure
Me and Je Reviens
Pressure
Church
Pastoral Sketches
Japanese Sword Blades in the British Museum
The Mare out on the Road
The Blueprint
Blueprint II
Norfolk Island
Ends of the Earth
Birthplace
The Sick-Bags
Lateral Dimensions
Bright Lights on Earth
Panic Attack
Recognising the Derision as Fear
Gentrifical Force
The Physical Diaspora of William Wallace
The Brick Funnel
Sunday on a Country River
Ripe in the Arbours of the Nose
The Weatherproof Jungle Tree
Jet Propulsion Stereo
Industrial Relations

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

Niccolo' Milanese, The Liberal , April/May 2007
There is a text of about sixty propositions dating from 1988 by Australian poet Les Murray, entitled 'The Suspect Captivity of the Fisher King'. 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
The Biplane Houses Les Murray RRP: GBP£ 8.95 Discount: 10% You Save: GBP£ 0.89 Price: GBP£ 8.05 Available Paperback ISBN: 978 1 857548 93 8 Categories: Australian, Catholic Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Published: September 2006 216 x 135 mm 80 pages Publisher: Carcanet Press Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews Having tacked loose tin panels of the car shed together Peter the carpenter walks straight up the ladder, no hands, and buttons down lapels of the roof. from 'The Shining Slopes and Planes' In his first new volume of poems since Poems the Size of Photographs (2002), Les Murray celebrates the grace and variousness of the world with an unfailing abundance of imagination and linguistic energy. Here is a poet writing at the height of his powers, capturing the richness of life in story-poems, word-plays, history- and myth-makings, aphoristic fragments and domestic portraits, recollections of rural Australia and moments of urban experience. Houses - as home, landscape and metaphor - form a many-sided theme of the book, and as ever Murray's evocation of the natural world is unparalleled in its inventiveness. 'A poet of fantastic power and range... All human life is bound within Murray's poetry.' - The Observer 'Les Murray is one of the finest poets in whom the English language is now at work.' - Times Literary Supplement Contents: The Averted Early Summer Hail with Rhymes in O Post Mortem The Hanging Gardens Leaf Brims Airscapes The Statistics of Good Twelve Poems Too Often Round the Galleries Travelling the British Roads The Test The Kitchen Grammars Winter Winds The Tune on Your Mind The Domain of the Octopus A Dialect History of Australia For an Eightieth Birthday On the Central Coast Line Melbourne Pavement Coffee Photographing Aspiration Black Belt in Marital Arts The Welter A Levitation of Land Through the Lattice Door On the North Coast Line The Nostril Songs For a Convert in Boston The Newcastle Rounds The House Left in English Yregami Upright Clear Across Ghost Story The Shining Slopes and Planes The Succession A Stampede of the Sacrifice The Offshore Island An Acrophobe’s Dragon As Night-Dwelling Winter Approaches The Hoaxist Barker Unchained The Cool Green Lifestyle Death from Exposure Me and Je Reviens Pressure Church Pastoral Sketches Japanese Sword Blades in the British Museum The Mare out on the Road The Blueprint Blueprint II Norfolk Island Ends of the Earth Birthplace The Sick-Bags Lateral Dimensions Bright Lights on Earth Panic Attack Recognising the Derision as Fear Gentrifical Force The Physical Diaspora of William Wallace The Brick Funnel Sunday on a Country River Ripe in the Arbours of the Nose The Weatherproof Jungle Tree Jet Propulsion Stereo Industrial Relations 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 Niccolo' Milanese, The Liberal , April/May 2007 There is a text of about sixty propositions dating from 1988 by Australian poet Les Murray, entitled 'The Suspect Captivity of the Fisher King'. read more Niccolo' Milanese, The Liberal , April/May 2007 There is a text of about sixty propositions dating from 1988 by Australian poet Les Murray, entitled 'The Suspect Captivity of the Fisher King'. 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 Richard Price: A Month in Portugal read more Let's Gimbal! read more Carcanet New Poetry Showcase: The Audience Writes Back read more John Gallas: A Little Andaluciad read more Carcanet Poetry Showcase: 30th April read more The Manchester Writing Competition 2013 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