Les A. Murray

Leslie Allan Murray was born in Nabiac, New South Wales in 1938. He grew up on his father’s dairy farm. The area he lived in had a small population, and was covered in hills and forests. Murray had a strong connection with the Aboriginies and the ‘common folk’ as his parents were very poor and therefore he often only associated with the underprivileged, especially those in rural areas.

Murray studied modern languages at the University of Sydney, in 1957. Whilst in Sydney, he converted from Free Kirk Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism. He left the University of Sydney in 1960, and went to the Australian National University in Canberra where he became a translator of foreign scholarly material.
In 1965, Murray attended the British Commonwealth Arts Festival Poetry Conference in Cardiff. He then spent over a year travelling Britain and Europe. When he returned, to Australia he returned to his studies and graduated from the University of Sydney in 1969. He later earned his living as a poet and writer.

Sources:
A Brief Biography, 2010. Retrieved: March 8, 2011, from
http://www.lesmurray.org/bio.htm