Waiting for the Past

Les Murray

• Publisher: Black Inc.
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781863957137
• eBook ISBN: 9781925203219
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Winner, 2015 Queensland Literary Awards Les Murray's new volume of poems – his first in five years – continues his use of molten language. From "The Black Beaches" to "Radiant Pleats, Mulgoa", from "High Speed Trap Space" to "The Electric, 1960", this is verse that renews and transforms our sense of the world. Shortlisted, 2015 TS Eliot Poetry Prize 'No poet has ever travelled like this, whether in reality or simply in mind … Seeing the shape or hearing the sound of one thing in another, he finds forms' —Clive James, the Monthly 'A profuse talent for image making and a capacity to fold syntax, sense, and sound into extraordinary verbal forms … [Murray] is able to submit his consciousness to alien states and beings, inhabit them, and bring forth poems of startling originality in extraordinary language.' — Australian Book Review 'Murray's best poems are distinguished by the fact that reading them feels solitary: an encounter not with a personality but with language itself: its work of discovering the world through its patterns of sound.' —Sydney Review of Books 'This is Murray the revelator, master of the "hidden away"; his spade turns up so much truth it's as though he were mining great seams of it, which of course he is, even when as here he is bottoming out on the bedrock of reticence deep in the bucolic soul … Murray is the great mining baron of Australian literature — brash but also breathtakingly brilliant and often both at once — who, having strode like a colossus for decades over a vast empire of open-pits, has in his dotage turned leaf-whistling prospector, content with a glint in the pan.' —Weekend Australian 'Les Murray's new book, Waiting for the Past, is not one that his numerous admirers will want to pass up … it's a vintage collection.' —Sydney Morning Herald 'No one writes like Murray: so truthful, nakedly emotional, wry, watchful. He's set deep in the Australian landscape, writing about back roads, vertigo, sliced bread, old typewriters and the persistence of love. Murray is the holy fool of his own poems, and a hero of poetry.' — Guardian, Best Books of 2015Les Murray lives in Bunyah, near Taree in New South Wales. He has published some thirty books. His work is studied in schools and universities around Australia and has been translated into several foreign languages.

CONTENTS

The Black Beaches

Inspecting the Rivermouth

The Canonisation

High Rise

Nuclear Family Bees

When Two Percent Were Students

I Wrote a Little Haiku

Dynamic Rest

West Coast Township

Money and the Flying Horses

Sun Taiko

Persistence of the Reformation

Child Logic

Floodtime Night Shelter

Powder of Light

The Backroad Collections

Tap Dogs Music

English as a Second Language

High Speed Trap Space

Diabetica

The Privacy of Typewriters

All of Half Way

Big Rabbit at the Verandah

Being Spared the Inquests

Time Twins

The Plaster Eater

The Glory and Decline of Bread

Eating from the Dictionary

O.K. Primavera Lips

Order of Perception: West Kimberley

The Mussel Bowl

Growth

A Denizen

Radiant Pleats, Mulgoa

Bird Signatures

Last World Before the Stars

1960 Brought the Electric

Vertigo

Holland’s Nadir

Dog Skills

Raising an Only Child

Clan-Sized Night Chanting

Bread Again

Bench Seats

Grooming with Nail Clippers

The Thirties

Bollywood Video

Savoury

Up to the Greek Club

Self and Dream Self

Beasts of the City

Whale Sounding...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• The Black Beaches
• Inspecting the Rivermouth
• The Canonisation
• High Rise
• Nuclear Family Bees
• When Two Percent Were Students
• I Wrote a Little Haiku
• Dynamic Rest
• West Coast Township
• Money and the Flying Horses
• Sun Taiko
• Persistence of the Reformation
• Child Logic
• Floodtime Night Shelter
• Powder of Light
• The Backroad Collections
• Tap Dogs Music
• English as a Second Language
• High Speed Trap Space
• Diabetica
• The Privacy of Typewriters
• All of Half Way
• Big Rabbit at the Verandah
• Being Spared the Inquests
• Time Twins
• The Plaster Eater
• The Glory and Decline of Bread
• Eating from the Dictionary
• O.K. Primavera Lips
• Order of Perception: West Kimberley
• The Mussel Bowl
• Growth
• A Denizen
• Radiant Pleats, Mulgoa
• Bird Signatures
• Last World Before the Stars
• 1960 Brought the Electric
• Vertigo
• Holland’s Nadir
• Dog Skills
• Raising an Only Child
• Clan-Sized Night Chanting
• Bread Again
• Bench Seats
• Grooming with Nail Clippers
• The Thirties
• Bollywood Video
• Savoury
• Up to the Greek Club
• Self and Dream Self
• Beasts of the City
• Whale Sounding
• The Genghis Firmament
• The Massacre
• The Care
• High Foliage
• The Walk-Off in Newtown
• Jesus Was a Healer
• The Flute
• The Murders of Women
• Under the Lube Oil
• Winter Garden
• Goths in Leipzig
• Maryanne Bugg
• Acknowledgements
• Back Cover