| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (26 min. 4 sec.) ; 157858387 bytes |
| Summary |
Les Murray is in the super league of the world's greatest wordsmiths. According to the New Yorker Magazine, he is 'now routinely mentioned among the three or four leading English-language poets.' But as Peter Thompson discovers on Talking Heads, you'd have been very hard pressed to envisage the impoverished young Murray would one day front the Queen, wearing a suit, and accepting a grand award. Murray describes his young self as one of those 'furtively farting' kids who avoided poems."I avoided poetry just like the rest of them, until I was nearly at the end of high school. I was having a fairly bad time socially in high school, being a little bit autistic and a guy not knowing much about dealing with human beings. My teachers turned me on to modern poetry... they thought this was a good diversionary tactic and it worked a charm," he says.Through Murray's bush-bred themes, his nationalistic, straight forward Aussie character is clear. His words can be thrilling, but they can also be fiery and combative. It's clear that poetry has helped Murray tackle the world. Shine a light on his life and there are some dark shadows - his vindictive grandfather, his parents' rural poverty and the girls at school who desired his 'inner destruction'."To me writing means making discoveries, writing things down which surprise you and which you didn't know you knew, that sense of having got a piece of the world and organised it in a form which you can see clearly," he says.After a lifetime of typing with one finger, and '13 slim volumes' of poetry as Murray self-deprecatingly puts it, he seems to be the happiest he's ever been."I'll never get to the end of it... I knew instinctively that it would last me a lifetime."PRODUCTION DETAILS:Produced by ABC TV. Executive Producer: Margot Phillipson; Series Producer: Daniel Cooper |
| Notes |
Closed captioning in English |
| Event |
Broadcast 2010-06-21 at 18:30:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: G |
| Subject |
Conduct of life.
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Interviews.
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Poets -- Social conditions.
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Poets, Australian.
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Australia.
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| Form |
Streaming video
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| Author |
Murray, Les, contributor
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Thompson, Peter, host
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