'LES MURRAY, who died in 2019 after a short decline, inhabited Australia and its landscape so fully that his death meant something for the state of the language. “His poetry created a vernacular republic for Australia,” said his publisher, Black Inc., “a place where our language is preserved and renewed.” Or, in his own words, from 1998’s “Evening Alone at Bunyah”: “This country is my mind. […] We burgeoned and spread far.”
Continuous Creation: Last Poems shows the late poet of 50-some-odd years, a poet of animal noises, of jingles, of unpainted landscapes, whose cardinal directions were “rig,” “tat,” and “scunge,” writing, for the first time perhaps, notary, regretful poems. The posthumous book begins — almost preemptively — with “A Note on the Text” from editor Jamie Grant, who outlines the conditions under which the book was written and compiled: “Les continued to refuse to enter the digital world himself” and “was almost completely immobile.” A poet of absolute tenacity, too.'
(Introduction)
