Event Description
Lecture:
More than any Australian author before or since, poet and once National Living Treasure Les Murray (1938-2019) explored the imaginative richness and asserted the essential dignity of Australian English. The Australia of Murray’s mind, built from vignettes of folk memories, anecdotes, animal encounters and quirks of character, was a ‘Vernacular Republic’ that arose from everyday speech, beyond the reach of officialdom. This talk will address Murray’s lifelong delight in ‘prospecting on the property,’ a constant search for new possibilities in Australian idioms that produced dozens of entries in the Macquarie Dictionary and literary usages of dazzling originality. The talk will also compare Murray’s work in retrieving, conserving and celebrating Australian idioms and their meanings to similar efforts by Seamus Heaney in Ireland and Derek Walcott in the Caribbean, to highlight the international resonance of Murray’s local concerns.
Lecturer:
Writer Theodore Ell is an Honorary Lecturer in literature at the ANU, at work on a new authorised biography of Les Murray. His essay ‘Façades of Lebanon’, about witnessing the Lebanese revolution and surviving the Beirut port explosion, won the 2021 Calibre Essay Prize. His memoir of that period, Lebanon Days, was published in August 2024 and was Highly Commended for the 2025 ACT Book of the Year. His poetry collection Beginning in Sight shared the 2022 Anne Elder Award.
Recitalist:
Kian Chan began the piano at the age of four and studied under renowned pianists Grace Kim and Clemens Leske. Graduating from the Conservatorium High School in 2024, he won the school’s Concerto Competition and performed with the Penrith Symphony Orchestra in 2025 under Dr. Paul Terracini. Since 2021, he has been incredibly enthused by historical performance practices that led him to study the organ and harpsichord with Philip Swanton and Professor Neal Peres da Costa, respectively. He performed the Duruflé Toccata on the Sydney Town Hall Organ for the 2024 Young Organists’ Day. On harpsichord, Kian won the International New Talent Competition in 2021. A prize-winner in the 2023 and 2024 Sydney Organ Competitions, Kian is the new Director of Music and Organist of the Anglican Parish of Hunters Hill and will delight us with several of his favourite pieces played on the Bevington Heritage Organ. He is currently studying a Bachelor of Law and Arts at the University of Sydney.
Tickets:
$25 each, and available at: https://www.trybooking.com/DJMVI