A poet with manure on their boots

“A poet with manure on their boots”

“Magnus Ringgren about Les Murray (1938-2019)”

“This is a kulturartikel which is a part of Aftonbladet’s opinionsjournalistik.”

“The australian poet Les Murray was a redneck under the Southern cross. Now he is gone, and one of the most interesting and the most annoying voices in modern poetry have fallen silent.”

“He was born on a dairy farm in New South Wales in 1938, and someone has called him for a prominent kopoet. It is quite apt. He had manure on my boots. He remained faithful to his environment and its values. He was a catholic, and greatly old-fashioned conservative. What I do know, he left the never their homeland. The nobel Prize as it is often spoken about (hence the many translations into English) would have encroached on his ortstrohet. I do not believe that Stockholm was on his globe.”

“Nature has a very big role in Les Murray’s poetry. It is often cruel and repulsive: ”The kadaverstinkande the dog, who is calf of human and wolf, u002F hunt and eat small bloody things in which the people spread it out”. One might call it a kind of catholic biologism. Cities and civilization are anomalies in his world.”

“I remember his long-established scepticism against the asfaltvägarna which in the heat is very unfriendly to bare feet. A car at the motorvägskanten similar to a rapacious crocodile. His approach to nature is far away from the more orderly and almost cuddly which is often grown in Sweden. But Les Murray’s slakthusvärld can recall Lennart Sjogren’s sometimes.”

“Grumpy skepticism towards strangers, and climate change complete the picture. But why it should require the accurate opinions of the poetry?”