Cirrus@Austlit

Explores similarities between Murray and Gerard Manley Hopkins particularly in their use of highly visual and evocative language.

Examines the "notion of place in Murray's work, the complex nature of Bunyah as a 'centre of the world', and how a poetics of place is established and develops from the earliest collections" (p.16).

The article demonstrates that Murray's poems "of more than one or two pages but less than fifty or a hundred" have "modes and preoccupations in common: they are topographical poems in which the protagonist moves through a landscape observing and reflecting; or they are family memoirs and chronicles; or ... they are a combination of both" (p.43). The author also examines Murray's sympathy for the "Foucaultian crew of social outsiders ... marginalised by folie" (p. 49), which he sees as an energising force in the most successful of these poems.

Considers language and metre in Murray's poetry, examining it in relation to Murray's concept of "Wholespeak" which requires poetry to "engage us physically, in addition to integrating our different levels of consciousness" (p.66). The influences of Hopkins's sprung rhythm, Gaelic sound patterns and Aboriginal poetry on Murray's work are also explored.

Examines Murray's prose which he has spoken of as "Narrowspeak", in comparison to the "Wholespeak" of poetry.

Analyses Fredy Neptune within the context of the epic tradition and explores similarities and differences between Murray's work and the narratives of Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney and Ezra Pound.

Discusses the prosody and colloquial narrative tone of Fredy Neptune in the context of the Boeotian tradition which "locates the art of poetry in the 'vernacular republic'; the realm of common speech and ordinary life which cannot be represented through heroic ... narrative" (ALS 20.2, p.120).

Discussion of the underlying ethics and poetics of Murray's novel, including the concepts of "embodiment", metonymy, metaphor, realism and elements of linguistic theory.