Continuous Creation

Australia's greatest and best-loved poet, Les Murray (1938-2019) was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry at the nomination of Ted Hughes (1999) and won the T.S. Eliot Award among many other distinctions. He is a poet of deep environmental commitment: born and raised on the land, he died at his farm in Bunyah in New South Wales. Continuous Creation is his last major offering, compiled in his final years at Bunyah and found there after his death. '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,' wrote Derek Walcott in the New Republic. This last book, like his earlier collections, is many-toned: he is a comic writer, a satirist, elegist and hymnodist. He is a celebrator. He is a rainbow.

Les Murray (1938-2019) lived in Bunyah, near Taree in New South Wales. The author of some thirty books, his work is studied in schools and universities around Australia and has been translated into many foreign languages. In 1997 he was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry, in 1998 he won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and in 2004 he was awarded the Mondello Prize.