'Killing the Black Dog is Les Murray's courageous account of his struggle with depression, accompanied by poems specially selected by the author. Since the first edition appeared in 1997, hosts of readers have drawn insight from his account of the disease, its social effects and its origins in his family's history.
'As Murray writes in this revised and updated edition, the title was premature. He had mistaken a remission for a cure, and thought himself freed from the severe depressive illness which had twice invaded his life. Now, in a new afterword, he describes a relapse, but also shares some of the fruits of his further contemplation. He shows gratitude for help previously unacknowledged, and describes how patches of daylight now balance out those of darkness in his life. A further half dozen poems have been added, reflecting a more complex understanding of depression and its role in the lives of its sufferers.' (From Black Inc.'s website, abstract for the revised edition.)
''On the last day of 1985, I went home to live in Bunyah, the farming valley I had left some twenty-nine years earlier. My wife and our younger children followed two days later … at last I was going home, to care for my father in his old age and to live in the place from which I'd always felt displaced. What I didn't know was that I was heading home in order to go mad.'
'Killing the Black Dog is Les Murray's frank and courageous account of his struggle with depression. Since this essay first appeared, hosts of readers have drawn insight from his account of the disease, its social effects and its origins in his family's history. Murray describes how patches of daylight now balance out those of darkness in his life.' (Publication summary)
'This chapter outlines how the 1970s brought radical expression, new explorations of poetic persona, and increasing belief in the poet’s role to advocate for rights and freedoms. It argues that anthologies seeking to capture the zeitgeist failed to do so, sometimes due to using frameworks borrowed from North America that elided local diversity. The chapter asserts that small press culture constituted a provisional, heterogeneous commons that undid traditional definitions of authorship and form, and offered a space to air the previously taboo. It traces the turn to America as well as to popular culture, other media, and documentary. Through an examination of Michael Dransfield’s reception, it demonstrates how umbrella terms delimit complex individual poetics while demonstrating affiliations in Dransfield’s self-examination with contemporaries like Pam Brown, Nigel Roberts, and Vicki Viidkikas. The chapter also considers the impact of the first anthology of women’s poetry, Mother, I’m Rooted. It redresses the elision of its editor, Kate Jennings, from other anthologies and critical framings of the period, as well as the marginalisation of Kevin Gilbert.'
Source: Abstract.
'This chapter outlines how the 1970s brought radical expression, new explorations of poetic persona, and increasing belief in the poet’s role to advocate for rights and freedoms. It argues that anthologies seeking to capture the zeitgeist failed to do so, sometimes due to using frameworks borrowed from North America that elided local diversity. The chapter asserts that small press culture constituted a provisional, heterogeneous commons that undid traditional definitions of authorship and form, and offered a space to air the previously taboo. It traces the turn to America as well as to popular culture, other media, and documentary. Through an examination of Michael Dransfield’s reception, it demonstrates how umbrella terms delimit complex individual poetics while demonstrating affiliations in Dransfield’s self-examination with contemporaries like Pam Brown, Nigel Roberts, and Vicki Viidkikas. The chapter also considers the impact of the first anthology of women’s poetry, Mother, I’m Rooted. It redresses the elision of its editor, Kate Jennings, from other anthologies and critical framings of the period, as well as the marginalisation of Kevin Gilbert.'
Source: Abstract.
