Translations of Murray's poetry have been published in 11 languages: French, German, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Hindi, Russian, and Dutch.

In 1957, Murray entered the University of Sydney in the Faculty of Arts and joined the Royal Australian Navy Reserve to obtain a small income.

[5] He developed an interest in ancient and modern languages, and eventually qualified to become a professional translator at the Australian National University (where he was employed from 1963 to 1967).

During his studies he met other poets and writers such as Geoffrey Lehmann, Bob Ellis,[7] Clive James and Lex Banning, as well as future political journalists Laurie Oakes and Mungo McCallum Jr.

Murray lived for several months at a Sydney Push household at Milsons Point,[8]: 97–99  where he read Virgil's Eclogues at the suggestion of his host, Brian Jenkins.

[11] In 1971, Murray resigned from his "respectable cover occupations" of translator and public servant in Canberra to write poetry full-time.

It interprets religion loosely[7] and includes the work of many of poets such A. D. Hope, Judith Wright, Rosemary Dobson, Kevin Hart, Bruce Dawe and himself.

[18] His poetry is rich and diverse, while also exhibiting "an obvious unity and wholeness" based on "his consistent commitment to the ideals and values of what he sees as the real Australia".

[7] While admiring Murray's linguistic skill and poetic achievement, poet John Tranter, in 1977, also expressed uneasiness about some aspects of his work.

Tranter praises Murray's "good humour" and concludes that "For all my disagreements, and many of them are profound, I found the Vernacular Republic full of rich and complex poetry.

Always concerned with a "common reader", Murray's later poetry (for example, Dog Fox Field, 1990, Translations from the Natural World, 1992) recovers "populist" conventions of newspaper verse, singsong rhyme, and doggerel.

His brilliant manipulation of language, his ability to turn words into installations of reality, is often forced to hang on an embarrassing moral sharpness.

Literary critic Lawrence Bourke writes that "Murray, linking his birth to her death, traces his poetic vocation from these traumatic events, seeing in them the relegation of the rural poor by urban élites.

[7] Of his literary journalism, Bourke writes that "In a lively, frequently polemic prose style he promotes republicanism, patronage, Gaelic bardic poetry, warrior virtu, mysticism, and Aboriginal models, and attacks modernism and feminism."

In 1972, Murray and some other Sydney activists launched the Australian Commonwealth Party,[8]: 144–145  and authored its unusually idealistic campaign manifesto.

Helen Darville, an Australian writer who had won several major literary awards for her novel The Hand That Signed the Paper, had claimed to be the daughter of a Ukrainian immigrant, though her parents were in fact English migrants.

[8]: 282 In 1996, Murray became involved in a controversy about whether Australian historian Manning Clark had received and regularly worn the medal of the Order of Lenin.

This last part, as I read Murray, is largely imposed and disruptive, trying to pin a romantic political agenda to the work that's hardly there.