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.

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 (1938-2019) grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales. 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 Department. His real vocation was poetry, however, and ... read more

Awards won by Les Murray Short-listed, 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize (Waiting for the Past ) Long-listed, 1994 for the Oxford Chair of Poetry. Winner, 1996 T.S. Eliot Prize for the best collection. (Subhuman Redneck Poems) Winner, 1999 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Praise for Les Murray 'Les Murray's final gift to us, published exactly three years after his death, is certainly worth the wait.'

André Naffis-Sahely, The Times Literary Supplement

'The earth's physical landscape...is rendered with extraordinary, often strange, beauty.'

New Yorker

'His poetry was never less than a rough-edged hymn of praise to the ceaseless and unstoppable wonders of Creation'

Michael Glover, The Tablet

'The poems in this posthumous collection are, as so often in his work, intelligent, high-spirited, coolly or crudely argued, full of small delights, often with a strong dose of wrongheadedness... Murray was that rare thing, a poet who whatever his debts seemed an original.'

William Logan, The New York Times

'Very occasionally you come across something on the page which makes you think ''you can't do any better than this.'' Perfection achieved.'
BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review 'Waiting for the Past is a brilliant collection by a brilliant poet.'
Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine '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

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The Biplane Houses Les Murray Categories: Australian, Christianity Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (80 pages) (Pub. Sep 2006) 9781857548938 Out of Stock 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. 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 (1938-2019) grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales. 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 Department. His real vocation was poetry, however, and ... read more Awards won by Les Murray Short-listed, 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize (Waiting for the Past ) Long-listed, 1994 for the Oxford Chair of Poetry. Winner, 1996 T.S. Eliot Prize for the best collection. (Subhuman Redneck Poems) Winner, 1999 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Praise for Les Murray 'Les Murray's final gift to us, published exactly three years after his death, is certainly worth the wait.' André Naffis-Sahely, The Times Literary Supplement 'The earth's physical landscape...is rendered with extraordinary, often strange, beauty.' *New Yorker* 'His poetry was never less than a rough-edged hymn of praise to the ceaseless and unstoppable wonders of Creation' Michael Glover, The Tablet 'The poems in this posthumous collection are, as so often in his work, intelligent, high-spirited, coolly or crudely argued, full of small delights, often with a strong dose of wrongheadedness... Murray was that rare thing, a poet who whatever his debts seemed an original.' William Logan, The New York Times 'Very occasionally you come across something on the page which makes you think ''you can't do any better than this.'' Perfection achieved.' BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review 'Waiting for the Past is a brilliant collection by a brilliant poet.' Anthony Domestico, Commonweal Magazine '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	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog We've Moved! read more Books of the Year read more One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more
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