Fivefathers
Subtitle: five Australian poets of the pre-academic era
By: presented and edited by Les Murray.
Contributors: Murray, Les A., 1938-
Series: Fyfield books
Publisher: Carcanet Press; Carcanet Press Ltd.
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Manchester [England]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 207
Subjects: Australian poetry -- 20th century.; Australian poetry -- Male authors.; Men -- Poetry.; Australia -- Poetry.
Other titles: Five fathers
Description: '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 British editions - key figures in 'a Golden Age of Australian poetry which paradoxically coincided with its greatest marginalisation'. Murray's characteristically vivid and emphatic introductory essays to the poets, of whom he is in a real sense himself made, as heir and successor, and his 'essential' selections from their work, are personal and challenging. He evokes the writers' circumstances, the trajectories of their very different work, and he suggests why their accomplishments have been eclipsed in the wider bourse of English-language literary reputations. The Academy has much to answer for, yet the freedom the poets enjoyed was partly a result of their very neglect by institutions.

Murray strikes effectively against 'that imperial trap of exclusion', making the available map of our century's poetry larger and much richer.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 203).
Table of contents: title: Kenneth Slessor; title: Roland Robinson; title: David Campbell; title: James McAuley; title: Francis Webb.