Les Murray: Quick Facts

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Oct. 13, 2026

Facts

Also Known As	Murray, Leslie Allan
Born	October 17, 1938 • Australia
Died	April 29, 2019 (aged 80) • Taree • Australia
Notable Works	“A Working Forest” • “Dog Fox Field” • “Ethnic Radio” • “Fredy Neptune” • “Learning Human, Selected Poems” • “Peasant Mandarin” • “Poems the Size of Photographs” • “Subhuman Redneck Poems” • “Taller When Prone” • “The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle” • “Waiting for the Past”

Painting of Samuel Johnson showing Johnson seated at a desk with a quill in hand and papers before him, wearing a brown coat and white wig.

Samuel Johnson

English author

St. John Henry Newman

St. John Henry Newman

British theologian

W.H. Auden

W. H. Auden

British poet

Smollett, detail of an oil painting by an unknown artist, about 1770; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

Tobias Smollett

Scottish novelist

Southey, detail of a pencil and watercolour portrait by R. Hancock, 1796; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

Robert Southey

English author

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Andrew Motion

British poet and author

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Sir Stephen Spender

English poet

Novelist Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark

British writer

Arthur Symons, tempera painting by R.H. Sauter, 1935; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

Arthur Symons

English poet and critic

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Joseph Blanco White

Spanish-English writer

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Philip Larkin

British poet

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Sara Coleridge

British author

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Alexander Chalmers

Scottish author and editor

William Blake

William Blake

English engraver, artist, and poet

D.H. Lawrence

D.H. Lawrence

English writer

James Joyce wearing a dark suit, light tie, round glasses, and a hat, looking to the side outdoors in Zurich, Switzerland.

James Joyce

Irish author

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John Donne

English poet

T.S. Eliot stands at a chalkboard, writing a diagram with letters and Greek symbols representing characters for a play, in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study.

T.S. Eliot

American-English poet, playwright, and literary critic

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish author and clergyman

Portrait of poet Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

English author

Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry

A Study of Poetry

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

Famous Poets and Poetic Form

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

Poetry: First Lines