"The Mitchells" (1974) is a poem by Australian writer Les Murray. It was originally published in the poet's collection Lunch and Counter Lunch with the title "Dedication, Written Last: For the Vernacular Republic", and later included in several of the poet's single-author collections and other poetry anthologies.

Critical reception

Geoff Page in a discussion of Murray's best poems for Sydney Review of Books noted that "Murray is famous for having asserted that the only class is those who speak of class and ‘The Mitchells' is an apt illustration of the argument." He went on to write that the poem is "a well-constructed, well-finished artefact, in much the same way as the pole the two men are about to raise will be well-cut and solidly placed."

Publishing history

After its initial publication in Lunch and Counter Lunch in 1974 the poem was reprinted as follows:

Cheeries and Quartermasters edited by John Jenkins, Paper Castle, 1975 Selected Poems : The Vernacular Republic by Les Murray, Angus and Robertson, 1976 The Vernacular Republic : Poems 1961–1981 by Les Murray, Angus and Robertson, 1982 Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry edited by Les Murray, Collins Dove, 1986 Selected Poems by Les Murray, Carcanet, 1986 The Faber Book of Modern Australian Verse edited by Vincent Buckley, Faber, 1991 The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry edited by John Tranter and Philip Mead, Penguin, 1991 Collected Poems by Les Murray, Heinemann, 1991 (aka The Rabbiter's Bounty) Collected Poems by Les Murray, Heinemann, 1994 The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse edited by Peter Porter, Oxford University Press, 1996 Family Ties : Australian Poems of the Family edited by Jennifer Strauss, Oxford University Press, 1998 New Selected Poems by Les Murray, Duffy and Snellgrove, 1998 New Selected Poems by Les Murray, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000 Learning Human : New Selected Poems by Les Murray, Carcanet, 2001 The Canberra Times, 7 February 2004 80 Great Poems from Chaucer to Now edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press, 2006 60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press, 2009 The Best 100 Poems of Les Murray by Les Murray, Black Inc., 2012 Love is Strong as Death edited by Paul Kelly, Hamish Hamilton, 2019

The poem was also translated into German in 1996.

Notes The full text of the poem is available as part of the OpenLibrary's digitised version of Collected Poems (aka The Rabbiter's Bounty).

See also 1974 in Australian literature 1974 in poetry

References