Subhuman Redneck Poems Explained

Subhuman Redneck Poems is a collection of poems by Australian writer Les Murray, published by Duffy and Snellgrove in 1996.^[1]

The collection contains 66 poems which were published in a variety of original publications, with some being published here for the first time.^[2]

Contents

• "The Family Farmers' Victory"
• "A Brief History"
• "Where Humans Can't Leave and Mustn't Complain"
• "Green Rose Tan"
• "The Say-But-the-Word Centurion Attempts a Summary"
• "Dead Trees in the DamiC
• "Rock Music"
• "The Rollover"
• "Late Summer Fires"
• "Corniche"
• "Suspended Vessels"
• "The Water Column"
• "The Beneficiaries"
• "The Maenads"
• "The Portrait Head"
• "Phrygia, Birthplace of Embroidery"
• "Like Wheeling Stacked Water"
• "Wallis Lake Estuary"
• "Twin Towns History"
• "The Sand Dingoes"
• "On Home Beaches"
• "Leash Chain"
• "From Bennett's Head"
• "The Bohemian Occupation"
• "The Fossil Imprint"
• "On the Present Slaughter of Feral Animals"
• "Memories of the Height-to-Weight Ratio"
• "Water-Gardening in an Old Farm Dam"
• "The Suspension of Knock"
• "It Allows a Portrait in Line-Scan at Fifteen"
• "Performance"
• "War Song"
• "Australian Love Poem"
• "Inside Ayers Rock"
• "Each Morning Once More Seamless"
• "Contested Landscape at Forsayth"
• "The Shield-Scales of Heraldry"
• "The Year of the Kiln Portraits"
• "A Stage of Gentrification"
• "Earth Tremor at Night"
• "Waking Up on Tour"
• "Tympan Alley"
• "A Lego of Driving to Sydney"
• "Burning Want"
• "For the Sydney Jewish Museum : And Peter Wagner"
• "The Last Hellos"
• "Opening in England"
• "My Ancestress and the Secret Ballot : 1848 and 1851"
• "Comete"
• "Dry Water"
• "Life Cycle of Ideas"
• "Cotton Flannelette"
• "The Trances"
• "The Devil"
• "The Nearly Departed"
• "The Warm Rain"
• "For Helen Darville"
• "Demo"
• "Deaf Language"
• "Reverse Light"
• "The Genetic Galaxy"
• "Blowfly Grass"
• "Dreambabwe"
• "Below Bronte House"
• "The Head-Spider"
• "Under the Banana Mountains"

Critical reception

Writing in the Independent (UK) William Scammell noted: "If you like your politics in black and white, or Left and Right, Les Murray might be filed away, in his latest incarnation, as a reactionary mystic nationalist - an Australian Solzhenitsyn, perhaps - who babbles about God while sniping at the multicultural facts of modern life and smearing liberals with responsibility for half the horrors of the 20th century."^[3]

Awards

• 1996 winner T. S. Eliot Prize^[4]
• 1997 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Poetry^[5]

Notes

• Tony Stephens interviewed the author about this collection for The Sydney Morning Herald.^[6]

See also

• 1996 in Australian literature

Notes and References

1. Web site: Subhuman Redneck Poems by Les Murray. National Library of Australia. 15 October 2024.
2. Web site: Austlit — Subhuman Redneck Poems by Les Murray. Austlit. 15 October 2024.
3. Web site: "Going down but not under" . The Independent, 6 October 1996, p32. 16 October 2024. .
4. Web site: "1993-2015 The T. S. Eliot Prize" . ... 16 October 2024.
5. Web site: "'Drowner' awarded top prize " . The Age 18 October 1997, p14. 16 October 2024. .
6. Web site: "Return of the Redneck" . Sydney Morning Herald, 21 September 1996, p3s. 16 October 2024. .