The Latest Breaking News from Les Murray

Australian poetry classics: Les Murray’s The Broad Bean Sermon is inexhaustible food for contemplation

In his lifetime, Les Murray (1938–2019) was often associated with contradiction and tension. He was seen as both Australia’s national poet and a reactionary who was out of step with modern Australian life. He was internationally fêted, often seen as a potential Nobel laureate, but he had a complicated local…

The Conversation · Sep 24

Can the Socceroos stop the nation? It would be 40 years in the making for SBS

The broadcaster has covered every World Cup since 1986, and all signs point to Australia’s match against Paraguay breaking records

The Guardian - AU · Jun 25

Zidane, Eusébio … Adams: footballers whose names are also song titles

Plus: two European ties in the same stadium on one day and the highest opening weekend goals-per-game ratio

The Guardian - UK · Aug 13, 2025

Henry Lawson and Judith Wright were deaf – but they’re rarely acknowledged as disabled writers. Why does that matter?

Most of us know Henry Lawson and Judith Wright are icons of Australian literature. But it’s less well known that they were both disabled.

The Conversation · Jul 3, 2023

Stella Prize 2023: Sarah Holland-Batt wins $60,000 for her poetry collection, The Jaguar

Sarah Holland-Batt has won the Stella Prize, for her "lyrical and wise" collection The Jaguar — the second year a poet has won this major award for women and non-binary writers.

ABC News · Apr 27, 2023

Les Murray said his autism shaped his poetry – his late poems offer insights into his creative process

An autistic author recently tweeted:

The Conversation · Aug 22, 2022

In his last poems, Les Murray offers a gentle, gracious bow of farewell, and just a few barbs

There are so many strange serendipities, and antipathies, forged across Les Murray’s work, verbal, historical and spiritual. In Continuous Creation also, Murray’s last, posthumous book (published almost three years after he died in a nursing home in Taree) these counterpoints and challenges await readers, mostly in gentle forms.

The Conversation · Feb 28, 2022