On Bunyah

Les Murray

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781784104986
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784105204
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

'Bunyah has been my refuge and home place all my life. This book concentrates on the smallest habitats of community, the scattered village and the lone house, where space makes the isolated dwelling into an illusory distant city ruled by its family and their laws.' This updated edition of On Bunyah tells a story of rural Australia in verse and photographs. From blood and fenceposts to broad beans and milk lorries, Les Murray evokes the life and landscape of his part of the country. // 'Murray is one of the very few poets with whose best work you feel that having read it you won't, can't be quite the same again.' London Review of Books

CONTENTS

1. Title Page
2. Dedication
3. BUNYAH – A BACKGROUND
   
4. Worker Knowledge
5. Layers of Pregnancy
6. The Kettle’s Bubble-Making Floor
7. The Gaelic Long Tunes
8. The Iron Kitchens
9. Two Dogs
10. Cockspur Bush
11. Cattle-Hoof Hardpan
12. Lyrebird
13. The Pole Barns
14. Caesar’s Ghost
15. from The Ballad of Jimmy Governor
16. The Broad Bean Sermon
17. from Their Cities, Their Universities
18. The Forest Hit by Modern Use
19. Rest from the Wars
20. The Cows on Killing Day
21. A Shrine House (from Crankshaft)
22. The China Pear Trees
23. Two Rains
24. Free Kirk Cemetery
25. Kiss of the Whip
26. The Thirties
27. Lace...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Bunyah – a Background
• Worker Knowledge
• Layers of Pregnancy
• The Kettle’s Bubble-Making Floor
• The Gaelic Long Tunes
• The Iron Kitchens
• Two Dogs
• Cockspur Bush
• Cattle-Hoof Hardpan
• Lyrebird
• The Pole Barns
• Caesar’s Ghost
• from The Ballad of Jimmy Governor
• The Broad Bean Sermon
• from Their Cities, Their Universities
• The Forest Hit by Modern Use
• Rest from the Wars
• The Cows on Killing Day
• A Shrine House (from Crankshaft)
• The China Pear Trees
• Two Rains
• Free Kirk Cemetery
• Kiss of the Whip
• The Thirties
• Lace Curtain
• The Grassfire Stanzas
• Weights
• The Milk Lorry
• The Butter Factory
• Bingham
• The Sleepout
• Cotton Flannelette
• Bluelookout Mountain
• The Moon Man
• Growth
• December: Infant among Cattle
• The Holy Show
• February: Feb
• The Ballad of the Barbed Wire Ocean
• Dead Trees in the Dam
• Home Front
• The Mystery
• The Grief
• The Double Diamond
• Powder of Light
• 1960 Brought the Electric
• Being Spared the Inquests
• The Invention of Pigs
• The Tin Wash Dish
• The Pure Food Act
• The Disorderly
• Diabetica
• Child Logic
• Angophora Floribunda
• Letters to the Winner
• The Water Plough
• from Machine Portraits
• For an Eightieth Birthday
• Small Flag Above the Slaughter
• Natal Grass
• Widower’s House 1950s–60s
• The Fair Go
• The Year of the Kiln Portraits
• When Two Percent Were Students
• Accordion Music
• Like Wheeling Stacked Water
• The Blame
• Dog Skills
• July: Midwinter Haircut
• from Crankshaft
• Local News I
• Second Childhood Is Legal
• Big Rabbit at the Verandah
• from Pastoral Sketches
• from As Country Was Slow
• Local News 2
• Three Observations
• Persistence of the Reformation
• Home Suite
• Midwinter Kangaroo Nests
• The Cowladder Stanzas
• School Bus Home
• The Signboards
• Bunyah Words, Past and Current
• Also by Les Murray from Carcanet Press
• Copyright