Waiting for the Past by Les Murray

Review by Joe Ramsden | 09 Sep 2015

The poems in this collection are a slow read, requiring moments of meditation in order to collect the careful meaning of Murray’s words, but sumptuously satisfying for the patient reader.

The canvas of Murray’s poems is his native New South Wales, its agricultural life as well as political landscape, and – as the title suggests – his memories. Throughout the collection, Murray invokes latent images from his classroom (English as a Second Language), his childhood (Child Logic) and his ‘deathless younger self’ (Self and Dream Self), folding each vignette into the tightly framed lens he uses to scrutinise the modern world.

The pages abound with glimpses of the poet’s past, many of which are not only amusing but resounding, as they avoid the usual pitfalls of parochial literature with an enjoyably wry commentary. The language of the collection is occasionally exclusionary; what may eventually be a rewarding allusion, or an adept piece of wordplay for the investigative reader, appears on the page as something akin to the product of an over-zealous wordsmith. As a result, some poems suffer from a sense of obscurity – however, while initially arcane, they invite the reader to revisit them with promise of new meaning, and Murray investigates the worthiness of allusive obscurity in the piece I Wrote a Little Haiku with brilliant self-awareness. It is Murray’s understanding of himself and his attempt to understand the lives of others that makes this collection compelling.


Out now, published by Carcanet Press, RRP £9.99