1996
T. S. Eliot Prize
Winner
Les Murray (1938-2019) grew up on a dairy farm at Bunyah on the north coast of New South Wales. He studied at Sydney University and later worked as a translator at the Australian National University and as an officer in the Prime Minister's Department. From 1971 he has made literature his full-time career. He was the first Australian poet to achieve international acclaim without expatriation. Murray first visited Europe in the 1960s, and returned frequently to give poetry readings.
Carcanet Press publishes his Collected Poems and his New Selected Poems (2012), as well as his individual collections, including Translations from a Natural World (shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 1993), Subhuman Redneck Poems (awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize 1996), Waiting for the Past (shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2015), and The Biplane Houses (2006), and his essays and prose writings in The Paperbark Tree (1992). His verse novel Fredy Neptune appeared in 1998 and in 2004 won the Mondello Prize in Italy and a major German award at the Leipzig Book Fair. He also edited The Quadrant Book of Poetry 2001-2010.
In 1994 Murray was nominated for the Oxford Chair of Poetry and in 1999 he was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry at Buckingham Palace, an honour was recommended by the late Poet Laureate Ted Hughes.
This biography of Les Murray is taken from the Carcanet Press website.
Carcanet Press
Announcements
Introduction
The T. S. Eliot Prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland. Described by Sir Andrew Motion as ‘the prize poets most want to win’ and by The Independent as the ‘world’s top poetry award’, it is the most prestigious poetry prize in the world, and the only major poetry prize judged purely by established poets.
Announcements
Introduction
The T. S. Eliot Prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best new poetry collection published in the UK and Ireland. Described by Sir Andrew Motion as ‘the prize poets most want to win’ and by The Independent as the ‘world’s top poetry award’, it is the most prestigious poetry prize in the world, and the only major poetry prize judged purely by established poets.
Announcements
Shortlisted Works
Shortlisted Poets
Ciaran Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast, where he lived. He worked in the Arts Council of...
Maura Dooley was born in Truro, grew up in Bristol, worked for some years in Yorkshire, and has...
John Fuller, born in Ashford, Kent, is an acclaimed poet and novelist. His collection Stones and Fires (1996)...
Seamus Heaney was born on 13 April 1939 in County Derry, Northern Ireland. His first collection, Death of...
Stephen Knight was born in Swansea, read English at Oxford University, then studied at the Bristol Old Vic...
Adrian Mitchell (1932-2008) was a prolific poet, playwright and children’s writer. His poetry’s simplicity, clarity, passion and humour...
Alice Oswald lives in Devon and is married with three children. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing...
Susan Wicks has published eight collections of poetry, five of them with Bloodaxe Books: Dear Crane (2021), The...
Christopher Reid was born in Hong Kong in 1949 and studied at Oxford. He then worked as a...
Judges
CHAIR
Andrew Motion was UK Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009, is co-founder of the online Poetry Archive, and...
Related News Stories
In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrated its 30th anniversary. We marked the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion). Les Murray won the T. S. Eliot Prize 1996 with Subhuman Redneck Poems (Carcanet), judged by Andrew...
This article on the early years of the T. S. Eliot Prize was written and added to the website in 2025. The winner of T. S. Eliot Prize 1996 was Australian poet Les Murray for his collection Subhuman Redneck Poems (Carcanet Press). Although he was unable to be present...
