The heat of recent controversy in Australia about the meaning and value of multiculturalism in education, in history and in society at large is an indication of the tenacity with which a dominant culture, in this case that of British Australia, clings to its privileges.

However, to the extent that these cultures come to recognise the differences and tensions existing within the dominant culture itself they lessen its exclusivity and widen the choices available to everybody.

Les Murray describes his poetry as ‘a celebration of life; a contemplation of life in ways that interest and delight people and make them reflective’. Poetry, he says, is ‘primarily not to be studied, it is to be read’.

Few people could disagree with Murray that the most desirable response to poetry is for it to be read out of love rather than out of a sense of obligation. But inspiring this distinction between the ‘analytical’ and the ‘instinctive’ approach to poetry are Murray’s ‘deeply ambivalent’ feelings about the motives behind much literary criticism. Murray is not totally convinced that it functions in promoting literature, and like a number of his contemporaries such as Judith Wright and Patrick White, he is also wary of academics.