When I heard Les Murray give a poetry reading in Carlisle in 1992, I knew little of his work, or that this large, friendly man had already published several collections of groundbreaking verse. Inventive and comfortable with language, he loved reading to the public and his verse carried people with him.
We were both fathers of sons with autism: the communication difficulties are explored outstandingly well in It Allows a Portrait in Line Scan at Fifteen from his collection Subhuman Redneck Poems.
I asked if he would be the lead judge in a poetry competition that I was setting up for the National Autistic Society. “Of course,” Les said unhesitatingly, and the Cumbrian poets William Scammell and Patricia Pogson joined him.
During a stay at my house in the Lake District, he read more than 1,000 poems, and in 1994 the anthology A Squillet of Wise Fools Gold was published.
