Les Murray (poet)
Australian poet and critic (1938-2019)
Leslie Allan Murray (17 October 1938 – 29 April 2019) was an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spanned over 40 years and he published nearly 30 volumes of poetry as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings.
Translations of Murray's poetry have been published in 11 languages: French, German, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Hindi, Russian, and Dutch. Murray's poetry won many awards and he is regarded as "the leading Australian poet of his generation". He was rated in 1997 by the National Trust of Australia as one of the 100 Australian Living Treasures.
Early life and education
Leslie Allan Murray was born on 17 October 1938, in Nabiac, New South Wales, and grew up in nearby Bunyah. He attended primary and early high school in Nabiac and then Taree High School. At age 18, while watching mayflies along the river, Murray decided to become a poet.
In 1957, Murray entered the University of Sydney in the Faculty of Arts and joined the Royal Australian Navy Reserve to obtain a small income. Speaking about this time to Clive James he said: "I was as soft-headed as you could imagine.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Les Murray (poet)” as australian poet and critic (1938-2019). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q259841. VIAF identifies the subject as 4940524. The Library of Congress control number is n50034270. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 2019, 1997 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Les Murray (poet)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.