[1][2][3] His thesis was on Buddhist influences on the Australian poets Harold Stewart, Robert Gray and Judith Beveridge.
Julieanne Lamond writes in Southerly that "McLaren attempts to find a stable connection between the Buddhist acceptance in the face of unknowing ... and the anger and drama of his sense of history".
camping underground is a vernacular lament for our country’s past, present, and possible futures, but it never succumbs to cynicism: it feels urgent, affectionate, and beautiful, full of despair and love and a biting sense of humour.
Former Cessnock writer John Hughes writes that "McLaren’s verse grabs you like an accident, like the blood smell of metallic paint, or the flecks of hair and scalp behind a twisted steering wheel.
His country towns, like his Australia, are human versions of a wrecker’s yard, as if all the violence and unlived life of their inhabitants concentrated in that instant before death and exploded.