Les Murray is a talented Australian poet born during 1938. Murray didn't have an easy start in life as he was raised in poverty while living on his grandparents' farm in Bunyah, New South Wales. Yet this period of his life significantly shaped the essence, style, and tone of his poetry. Popular poetic themes include the culture, history, and landscape of Australia. Specifically, he touches on family matters, indigenous Australian life, white settlers, and the rural landscape familiar to his childhood.
Murray explained in a 1998 BBC interview that the development of his poetry is rooted in the integration of his unconscious, subconscious, and conscious. It's as if he flows through altered states of being to deepen his understanding of life's complexity. For example, the poem "The Meaning of Existence" describes how nature itself understands the meaning of life.
He points to the trees, rivers, as well as the planets. Even the human body grasps life's essence, although the human mind gets in the way with its hunger for selfish liberation. In other words, the mind and the body are sustaining tension between each other. Murray has published several poetry collections, such as Dog Fox Field (1990). Also, he won numerous prizes such as the Grace Levin Prize for Poetry and the UK Poetry Society Choice Prize.
