Taller When Prone is Les Murray’s first volume of new poems since 2006’s The Biplane Houses.With characteristic grace and dexterity, these poems combine a mastery of form with a matchless ear for the Australian vernacular.Many evoke rural life - its rhythms and rituals, the natural world, the landscape and the people who have shaped it.There are traveller’s tales, elegies, meditative fragments and satirical sketches.Above all there is Murray’s astonishing versatility, on display here at its exhilarating best.‘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‘He is, quite simply, the one by whom the language lives.’ - Joseph Brodsky