Les Murray is an avowed believer in Australian cultural sovereignty; and as a result his mind and voice, in his poetry, essentially emanates from the Bush. Murray is a natural sceptic of the tools of modernity, and recognises the destructiveness and indifference of technology. His poems lie at the core of Murray's vaunted opposition to modernism. Central to his work is the concept of the Athenian and the Boetian. His poetry is underscored by a philosophical opposition between Athens and Boetia, where the former symbolises the new, the crass, and the rational; and the latter the imaginary, the inspirational, and the ritual.

As evident throughout most of his poetry, Murray's solution to this dark side of human existence is through spiritual enlightenment. In his poem Driving Through Sawmill Towns, he seeks to naturalise the landscape and promote the relationships the inhabitants of the country shares with nature. Moreover...