"It would be as myopic to regard Mr Murray as an Australian poet as to call Yeats an Irishman. He is, quite simply, the one by whom the language lives", Joseph Brodsky said. And Derek Walcott: "There is no poetry in the English language so rooted in...

"This book", writes Les Murray, "presents to British and European readers selections from the work of five leading Australian poets of the generation before mine". They are, with Judith Wright, A. D. Hope and Gwen Harwood-who are happily available in...

Not only the migrating birds speak in "Translations from the Natural World". The imprisoned species of pigs use their slum language; ravens, cuttlefish, sunflowers and a shell-back tick are among those non-verbal members of our natural world which fi...