Greg Clarke - Les Murray's Vernacular Version

Murray, like the KJV seeks connection to the divine in the vernacular.

Greatest Aussie poet - see Derek Walcott's verdict. Murray is a Catholic who dedicates his poetry to the glory of God.

A religious upbringing - Presbyterian religion terrified him. A spine chilling sermon from 1 Kings - 'the cloud no bigger than a man's hand'.

He knew the KJV - 'the first poetry I encountered'. Religion and poetry are linked in a particular way. 'Religion is a big metaphor taken all the way to identity'. The more rationalising, the more he ran to his faith. The harder it is to believe, the more he wants to! It's a challenge after all. A perverse resistance to the enlightenment. He is a trenchant critic of the 'trends'.

'Poetry and Religion'

Religion are poems... etc

'God is the poetry caught in any religion'.

Greg calls this the vernacularisation of religious expression.

The Catholic tradition caught his eye, not the Protestant. See 'Distinguo': 'Prose is Protestant-agnostic. .... but poetry is Catholic.

But in the KJV do you not see story AND presence come together? Perhaps.

The Australian spirit: can it find a home in the biblical tradition. He points to the quest for a national identity, drawn from the broad Christian tradition.

'The Quality of Sprawl' -

Being roughly Christian, it scratches the other cheek
And thinks it unlikely. Though people have been shot for sprawl.

A vernacular vision of the Sermon on the Mount? And grace. Going the extra 100 miles!

The mirth of Aussie spirituality is what may be its greatest contribution.

Murray seeks to revernacularise the vernacular tradition.... to bring the spiritual back into the secular vernacular.

See his 'Translations of the Natural World'.

The divine will in fact be revealed in the natural - by its sensual and metaphorical power. To speak of a bean... may be to speak something of God.

The translator's preface to the KJV: using metaphors to press home the point about something being spiritually revealed. Murray wants to translate the natural world to show who it is 'revelatory'. See 'Bat's Ultrasound'. 'Broad Bean Sermon'.