The Gleaming Clouds

Alfredson has many moods, many dictions, many themes. He at once glories in and laments the ephemeral, the only lasting quality in his world. This harmonises with his Buddhist outlook on life. His is a religious sensibility that draws, however, on many traditions and myths, one of respect for all beings, the soils, the rocks, the plants, the people and other animals, the living, the dead. The moods range widely, from the tortures of mental illness through deep serenity to fun, love joys, wry humour and satire. He works with sharp thoughts, sharp images and often singing words. He writes and translates in varied forms from ancient to disciplined free verse and has a way of surprising even his poet friends.

Murray Alfredson is a former librarian, lecturer and Buddhist Associate in the Multi-Faith Chaplaincy at Flinders University. He has published essays on Buddhist meditation, on inter-faith relations and poetics, and poems and poetry translations in journals and anthologies in Australia, the USA, the UK, Sweden and Canada, and a short collection, Nectar and light, in New poets, 12, Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets and Wakefield Press, 2007.
He has won a High Beam poetry award 2004, the Poetry Unhinged Multicultural Poetry Prize 2006, the Friendly Street Poets Political poetry prize 2009, and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, in 2009 and 2012.
He lives on the Fleurieu Peninsula by Gulf St Vincent in South Australia.