Les Murray's Collected Poems displays the full range of his poetic art. This volume contains all the poems he wants to preserve, apart from the verse novel Fredy Neptune, from his first book The Ilex Tree (1965) to Poems the Size of Photographs (2002). In tracing Murray's artistic development, it shows an ever-changing power, grace and humour, as well as great versatility and formal mastery.

"He is, quite simply, the one by whom language lives." - Joseph Brodsky

"There is no poetry in the English language now so rooted in its sacredness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures and yet so intimate and conversational." - Derek Walcott