The last hellos for literary giant Les Murray

Acclaimed Australian poet Les Murray has been farewelled at a state memorial, with verses from his own writings

Tom Keneally, left, at the state memorial service for poet Les Murray at the NSW State Library in Sydney yesterday. Picture: AAP

“Don’t die, Dad — but they die.’’ So Les Murray wrote after his fath­er, Cecil, died in 1995. The poem is The Last Hellos.

Yesterday it was the turn of Murray’s family and friends to say a last hello. More than 300 people­, including two of his five children, came to the State Librar­y of NSW in Sydney for a state memorial service for the poet, who died in a nursing home in Taree on April 29, aged 80.

“My dad never liked to explain his poems,” his youngest son, Peter, told the audience. “He thought to do so would deny people­ their own interpretations.”

Peter, an IT specialist and amateur theatre actor, did not read from The Last Hellos. That would have been too hard.

He chose, instead, one of his father’s lighthearted poems, The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever. “That’s where you hope Les is,” said his literary agent, Margaret Connolly. “Somewhere in shorts in wet winter grass.”

William Barton plays the didgeridoo. Picture: AAP

As Peter noted in that ode to his father: “On your day there was a good crowd, family and people from away.” That was true then and true yesterday.

However, Murray’s wife of 57 years, Valerie, was unable to atten­d due to poor health. “We can thank Valerie for the poet Les became,” said poet Geoffrey ­Lehmann, co-author of Murray’s 1965 debut book, The Ilex Tree.

Murray hated long speeches. When asked to deliver one, he would usually read from one of his poems instead.

The speakers at the service followe­d suit and read from his poems. Fittingly, the first reader was the poet himself — an audio recording of him reading An Absolutel­y Ordinary Rainbow.

Yesterday’s was the first state memorial for a poet in NSW since 1962, when one was held for Dame Mary Gilmore, the great-great-aunt of Scott Mo­r­rison.

The Prime Minister was represented by an official from his office­, as was Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove.

NSW Governor Margaret Beazley. Picture: AAP

The audience walked into the Mitchell Library Reading Room, a place Murray loved, to the sound of bird calls recorded where he lived most of his life, at Bunyah, 300km north of Sydney. Large TV screens showed photos of him at different times of his life.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Governor Margaret Beazley attended, as did a host of writers, poets and publishers, includin­g Tom Keneally, Robert Gray, Suzanne Edgar, Judith Beverid­ge, Stephen Edgar, Jamie Grant, Peter Skrzynecki, Kathy Bail, Nikki Christer and Morrie Schwartz.

“I wouldn’t have missed it,’’ Keneally said.

Writer Nikki Gemmell, a columnist at The Australian, said her 30-year friendship with Murray­ was based on “a bedrock of humour”. “There was always something of a little boy in Les,” she said.

The Last Hellos was read by Murray himself. As the recording played, a screen showed the title page of that first book, The Ilex Tree. In blue pen Murray, then 27, had written: “To Dad, with much love from Leslie.”