Prose for a Poet

The West Verandah: The Life and Work of Les Murray
edited by Sonia Mycak
Boraga Academic, 2016, 189 pages, $25
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This is an example of a useful and absorbing sort of book of which there was once a plentiful supply—namely a monograph, or selection of essays, on a major Australian poet aimed at a general audience. One is much more likely these days to encounter collections of conference papers on postcolonialism or arcane PhD rewrites in expensive foreign editions of about a hundred copies.

Some people, including the subject of this book, have argued that criticism is inherently a secondary, even parasitic, occupation and that it is always better to go directly to the source unassisted and unencumbered. In the case of The West Verandah: The Life and Work of Les Murray they would be wrong. Sonia Mycak, a university teacher herself, has compiled a book which, while often scholarly, is not primarily academic. For a start, it includes a poem on the…