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Green Shadows and Other Poems
Gerald Murnane turns to poetry at the end of his literary career, writing frank, disarming poems that traverse the rich span of his life.
Gerald Murnane, now in his eightieth year, began his writing career as a poet. After many years as a writer of fiction, he only returned to poetry a few years ago when he moved to Goroke, in the Western Districts of Victoria, after the death of his wife. The forty-five poems collected here are in a strikingly different mode to his fiction — without framing or digressions, and with very few images, they speak openly to the reader of the author’s memories, beliefs and experiences. They are for this reason an important addition to his internationally recognised body of fiction, most recently Border Districts and Collected Short Fiction, published by Giramondo.
The poems include tributes to his mother and father and to his family, and to places that have played a formative role in his life, like Gippsland, Bendigo, Warrnambool, the Western Districts, and of course Goroke. Especially moving are his poems dedicated to authors who have influenced him — Lesbia Harford and Thomas Hardy, William Carlos Williams, Henry Handel Richardson, Marcel Proust, and with particular force, the eighteenth-century poet John Clare, who gives the collection its title, revered ‘not only for his writings / but for his losing his reason when / he was forced from the district he had wanted as his for life.’
Gerald Murnane, now in his eightieth year, began his writing career as a poet. After many years as a writer of fiction, he only returned to poetry a few years ago when he moved to Goroke, in the Western Districts of Victoria, after the death of his wife. The forty-five poems collected here are in a strikingly different mode to his fiction — without framing or digressions, and with very few images, they speak openly to the reader of the author’s memories, beliefs and experiences. They are for this reason an important addition to his internationally recognised body of fiction, most recently Border Districts and Collected Short Fiction, published by Giramondo.
The poems include tributes to his mother and father and to his family, and to places that have played a formative role in his life, like Gippsland, Bendigo, Warrnambool, the Western Districts, and of course Goroke. Especially moving are his poems dedicated to authors who have influenced him — Lesbia Harford and Thomas Hardy, William Carlos Williams, Henry Handel Richardson, Marcel Proust, and with particular force, the eighteenth-century poet John Clare, who gives the collection its title, revered ‘not only for his writings / but for his losing his reason when / he was forced from the district he had wanted as his for life.’
104 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2019
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42 people want to read
About the author
Gerald Murnane
32 books397 followersMurnane's first two books, Tamarisk Row (1974) and A Lifetime on Clouds (1976), seem to be semi-autobiographical accounts of his childhood and adolescence. Both are composed largely of very long but grammatical sentences.
In 1982, he attained his mature style with The Plains, a short novel about a young filmmaker who travels to a fictive country far within Australia, where his failure to make a film is perhaps his most profound achievement. The novel is both a metaphysical parable about appearance and reality, and a parodic examination of traditions and cultural horizons. The novel depicts an abstracted Australia, akin to something out of mythology or fable. The novel was followed by: Landscape With Landscape (1985), Inland (1988), Velvet Waters (1990), and Emerald Blue (1995). A book of essays, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, appeared in 2005, and a new work of fiction, Barley Patch, was released in 2009. All of these books are concerned with the relation between memory, image, and landscape, and frequently with the relation between fiction and non-fiction.
Murnane is mainly known within Australia. A seminar was held on his work at the University of Newcastle in 2001. Murnane does, however, also have a following in other countries, especially Sweden and the United States, where The Plains was published in 1985 and reprinted in 2004 (New Issues Poetry & Prose), and where Dalkey Archive Press has recently issued Barley Patch and will be reprinting Inland in 2012. In 2011, The Plains' was translated into French and published in France by P.O.L, and in 2012 will be published in Hungarian. In July/August 2017, The Plains was the number 1 book recommendation of South West German Radio (SWR2). His works have been translated into Italian (Velvet Waters as Una Melodia), German (The Plains as Die Ebenen, Border Districts as Grenzbezirke, Landscape With Landscape as Landschaft mit Landschaft, all publ. Suhrkamp Verlag), Spanish (The Plains as Las llanuras, and Something for the Pain as Una vida en las carreras, all published by Editorial Minúscula), Catalan (The Plains as Les planes, also published by Editorial Minúscula), Swedish (Inland as Inlandet, The Plains as Slätterna, Velvet Waters as Sammetsvatten and Barley Patch as Korntäppa) and Serbian (The Plains as Ravnice; Inland as Unutrašnjost, both published by Blum izdavaštvo 2025).
In 1982, he attained his mature style with The Plains, a short novel about a young filmmaker who travels to a fictive country far within Australia, where his failure to make a film is perhaps his most profound achievement. The novel is both a metaphysical parable about appearance and reality, and a parodic examination of traditions and cultural horizons. The novel depicts an abstracted Australia, akin to something out of mythology or fable. The novel was followed by: Landscape With Landscape (1985), Inland (1988), Velvet Waters (1990), and Emerald Blue (1995). A book of essays, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs, appeared in 2005, and a new work of fiction, Barley Patch, was released in 2009. All of these books are concerned with the relation between memory, image, and landscape, and frequently with the relation between fiction and non-fiction.
Murnane is mainly known within Australia. A seminar was held on his work at the University of Newcastle in 2001. Murnane does, however, also have a following in other countries, especially Sweden and the United States, where The Plains was published in 1985 and reprinted in 2004 (New Issues Poetry & Prose), and where Dalkey Archive Press has recently issued Barley Patch and will be reprinting Inland in 2012. In 2011, The Plains' was translated into French and published in France by P.O.L, and in 2012 will be published in Hungarian. In July/August 2017, The Plains was the number 1 book recommendation of South West German Radio (SWR2). His works have been translated into Italian (Velvet Waters as Una Melodia), German (The Plains as Die Ebenen, Border Districts as Grenzbezirke, Landscape With Landscape as Landschaft mit Landschaft, all publ. Suhrkamp Verlag), Spanish (The Plains as Las llanuras, and Something for the Pain as Una vida en las carreras, all published by Editorial Minúscula), Catalan (The Plains as Les planes, also published by Editorial Minúscula), Swedish (Inland as Inlandet, The Plains as Slätterna, Velvet Waters as Sammetsvatten and Barley Patch as Korntäppa) and Serbian (The Plains as Ravnice; Inland as Unutrašnjost, both published by Blum izdavaštvo 2025).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 20, 2022
Neurotic and beautiful
March 7, 2019
As regular readers know, I'm outside my comfort zone when reviewing poetry. But Gerald Murnane's poetry is the exact opposite of what I expected: unlike a lot of modern Australian poetry which I find obscure and irrelevant to my interests, Murnane's poems are not only accessible but also very interesting indeed.
The first one in the book is titled 'If this is a poem' and it's very short...
If this is a poem
I mean, if Lesbia Harford
might not disown
it or Thomas Hardy
might read it through,
then I've somehow betrayed
or never knew
my true vocation. (p.1)
Murnane also muses on what he should have written in 'On first reading William Carlos Williams' ... and in 'The Darkling Thrush' he castigates himself for having an emotional response to certain poems, thus being one of those ignorant critics/ who rely on what they call feelings. When so much of Murnane's fiction has exhorted me not to identify the narrator with the author, I hesitate to suggest that these poems are reflections on his own life, yet with many of them it seems impossible to do otherwise. For, as the blurb tells us, Murnane is now in his eightieth year, and surely here he is reflecting on the directions his writing career has taken...
The blurber is in no doubt that the poems are expressions of authentic memory:
Yet I wonder. Murnane lives in a small town, and he's a widower among widows. So what seem to be recent intimate experiences in the poems 'Rosalie isn't speaking' and 'Angela is the first', seem risky to me. Surely, he writes, she'll never hear of its being published, unless you, Reader, make bold to inform her. Just imagine Rosalie — if she exists — reading this:
And 'Piss-weak' might get him into trouble too!
Murnane has made a virtue of inhibition in his fiction: is he now in his old age abandoning that inhibition to express tactless opinions that might see him friendless in Goroke? Whatever for?
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/03/07/g...
The first one in the book is titled 'If this is a poem' and it's very short...
If this is a poem
I mean, if Lesbia Harford
might not disown
it or Thomas Hardy
might read it through,
then I've somehow betrayed
or never knew
my true vocation. (p.1)
Murnane also muses on what he should have written in 'On first reading William Carlos Williams' ... and in 'The Darkling Thrush' he castigates himself for having an emotional response to certain poems, thus being one of those ignorant critics/ who rely on what they call feelings. When so much of Murnane's fiction has exhorted me not to identify the narrator with the author, I hesitate to suggest that these poems are reflections on his own life, yet with many of them it seems impossible to do otherwise. For, as the blurb tells us, Murnane is now in his eightieth year, and surely here he is reflecting on the directions his writing career has taken...
The blurber is in no doubt that the poems are expressions of authentic memory:
The forty-five poems collected here are in a strikingly different mode to his fiction – without framing or digressions, and with very few images, they speak openly to the reader of the author’s memories, beliefs and experiences. They are for this reason an important addition to his internationally recognised works of fiction, from Tamarisk Row and The Plains to Barley Patch, A Million Windows and Border Districts. [Underlining mine.]
Yet I wonder. Murnane lives in a small town, and he's a widower among widows. So what seem to be recent intimate experiences in the poems 'Rosalie isn't speaking' and 'Angela is the first', seem risky to me. Surely, he writes, she'll never hear of its being published, unless you, Reader, make bold to inform her. Just imagine Rosalie — if she exists — reading this:
I can only hope to get over my unease
by finding its true source
by learning why I have this urge to appease
persons of no importance
to me — sorry, Rosalie! (p.15)
And 'Piss-weak' might get him into trouble too!
You join what they call a service-club
in a little township to pay the place back
for its welcoming you, so you say, but in fact,
the club recruited you, and you didn't have the guts
to refuse. (p.30)
Murnane has made a virtue of inhibition in his fiction: is he now in his old age abandoning that inhibition to express tactless opinions that might see him friendless in Goroke? Whatever for?
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/03/07/g...
March 3, 2019
Murnane's first and only book of poems. I saw him interviewed the other night and picked up an autographed copy of this and A Season on Earth (the extended version of A Lifetime on Clouds which has also just been published). He said that when he was a young man he saw himself as being a poet but wrote unfashionable verse for the 1960s and became dejected by rejection. When he was able to get his novels published he decided that prose was his forte and stuck with that. These poems don't disabuse me of the notion that prose is the form that he excels in, but they are very interesting, especially for devotees of Murnane. The interviewer, Jason Steger, observed that the poems reveal more of the real Gerald Murnane than the novels do and I would agree with that assessment. They are all very personal and seemingly autobiographical and candid in a way that doesn't quite emerge in the novels. In terms of form, he mostly writes in regular metre, occasionally rhyming, and Larkin seems an obvious influence (he mentions Larkin in one of the poems). Here's a sample of one of the poems (that I chose for my 'poem of the day' to read to my students on Friday and that my colleague puts online after she's chosen an image to go with them):
https://medium.com/poem-of-the-day/ge...
Although I don't think this is the height of his work, I'm glad that it's in publication, similar to his memoir Something For the Pain, as another angle on the phenomenon that is Gerald Murnane.
https://medium.com/poem-of-the-day/ge...
Although I don't think this is the height of his work, I'm glad that it's in publication, similar to his memoir Something For the Pain, as another angle on the phenomenon that is Gerald Murnane.
January 16, 2022
I enjoyed these poems - a lot of grumpy, bored old-man observations. I could probably relate. A lot of whimsy and comment on the writing process too.
April 30, 2024
I've been putting off reading Gerald Murnane's novels, more than slightly intimidated by his reputation as being the next Australian who could win a Nobel prize. But these poems seem like a great introduction to his work and are very autobiographical in an accessible, self-aware and witty way.
He's obsessed by inland Australia after being frighted by the sea from a young age, he's a renowned "stay-put" having never travelled out of the country, is obsessed by horse-racing, which I didn't think would interest me but his interest is surprisingly interesting. He's also interested in words and what they convey and this was a fun collection to read, not a dud amongst them.
I hope to reread this collection soon, but for the moment it has to go back to the library because someone else has it on reserve.
He's obsessed by inland Australia after being frighted by the sea from a young age, he's a renowned "stay-put" having never travelled out of the country, is obsessed by horse-racing, which I didn't think would interest me but his interest is surprisingly interesting. He's also interested in words and what they convey and this was a fun collection to read, not a dud amongst them.
I hope to reread this collection soon, but for the moment it has to go back to the library because someone else has it on reserve.
November 20, 2019
Hilariously similar to his prose. I still loved it.
Read
August 8, 2021“Through my only window I see
mostly wall, but the view from each end of my street
is of countryside, level and seemingly empty.”
“the truth I’d discovered when I first
engaged with texts: the self-evident fact
of there being no reader nor subject-matter –
only images and feelings in a sort of eternity.”
“The world turns;
the sun burns
on a giant page
a strange message.”
“You’ll read thousands of pages, though you’ll never see,
unfortunately, what they revealed to me.”
“It merely tells how,
for sixty years, I wrote
about only what mattered most
to me, and whether or not
my stuff was read, and then stopped.”
mostly wall, but the view from each end of my street
is of countryside, level and seemingly empty.”
“the truth I’d discovered when I first
engaged with texts: the self-evident fact
of there being no reader nor subject-matter –
only images and feelings in a sort of eternity.”
“The world turns;
the sun burns
on a giant page
a strange message.”
“You’ll read thousands of pages, though you’ll never see,
unfortunately, what they revealed to me.”
“It merely tells how,
for sixty years, I wrote
about only what mattered most
to me, and whether or not
my stuff was read, and then stopped.”
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews