Les Murray on geology and soils

I heard Les Murray read some of his poetry and speak at the end of March, in the wonderful venue that is the chapel at Christ Church Grammar School, looking out onto Freshwater Bay as the sun set. Like Arthur Boyd, Les Murray has a highly aware view of Australia's landscape, expressed in language rather than paint.

He didn't read any of his "earth science" poetry at Christ Church chapel, but I had been dipping into my copy of "Collected Poems" for a few weeks earlier and it occured to me that Les Murray also has a keen sense of the poetry in rocks, soils, water and the land in general; inspiring stuff for earth scientists who may be occasionally dissatisfied with simple rationality.

Here's a few brief excerpts (any more words from each poem and I'll be outside fair copying limits, I think):

"...pleated water shaking out its bedding soil, increasing its scale, beginning the headlong...
...a squeeze-play through a cracked basalt bar, maintaining a foam roofed two-sided overhang of breakneck riesling..."

(from Bent Water in the Tasmanian Highlands, originally published in 'The People's Otherworld', 1983)

"...men dial Barrier Reefs long enfolded beneath the geology... There are many wrong numbers on the geophone, but it's brought us some distance..."

(from Machine Portraits With Pendant Spaceman, originally published in 'The People's Otherworld', 1983)

"He knows the map of Earth's fertile soils, and can draw it freehand...
...His favourite country was the Ukraine: it is nearly all deep fertile soil."

(from It Allows A Portrait in Line Scan at Fifteen, originally published in 'Subhuman Redneck Poems', 1996)

I'll keep reading. Finding beauty like this keeps me, for one, interested in my discipline and its value to humans.

Les Murray photograph from http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/226