Leo Kennedy
Leo Kennedy was a notable English-Canadian poet and social critic, born in Liverpool in 1907 and immigrating to Montreal at the age of five. He worked in his father's shipping business while attending night school and engaged with the literary community, notably joining the Montreal Group of poets in the 1920s. In 1928, he co-founded the Canadian Mercury and contributed to various literary journals, showcasing his commitment to exploring social issues, particularly concerning the lower classes.
Kennedy published his first and only collection of poetry, *The Shrouding*, in 1933, which reflected modernist influences. He founded the leftist journal *The New Frontier* in 1936, emphasizing the importance of social critique in literature. After a challenging early career, including a brief move to New York City during the Great Depression, he eventually settled in Chicago and later New Canaan, Connecticut, working in advertising and continuing to write.
Upon retiring in 1978, he returned to Montreal and focused on writing, often for children, while advocating for poetry as a means of social commentary. Kennedy passed away in 2000 in Pasadena, California, and is remembered for his contributions to modern Canadian poetry and his engagement with social issues.
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Leo Kennedy
Poet
- Born: August 22, 1907
- Birthplace: Liverpool, England
- Died: December 14, 2000
- Place of death: Pasadena, California
Biography
Leo Kennedy was born in Liverpool, England, in 1907, the son of John Kennedy, a ship chandler, and his wife, Lillian Bullen Kennedy. The family immigrated to Montreal in 1912, when Kennedy was five years old. He quit St. Patrick Academy after the sixth grade, and at age thirteen went to work in his father’s business as shipping clerk and bookkeeper while attending night school and later some extension courses at the University of Montreal. In the 1920’s, Kennedy joined a group of McGill University poets after group members discovered that he was the “Helen Laurence” whose work often appeared in the lonely hearts columns of the Montreal Star. The poets came to be known as the Montreal Group.
In 1928, Kennedy founded and edited the Canadian Mercury with F. R. Scott. He was also a regular contributor to The McGill Fortnightly Review, reflecting his increasing concern for the lower social classes. During this period, Kennedy worked at various jobs while writing and submitting poems to literary journals. However, by the time he married Miriam Carpin, financial need forced the two to seek better fortunes in New York City in 1929. The timing could not have been worse; the stock market crashed in October, 1929, forcing the couple to return to Montreal. Their marriage ended in the early 1930’s.
In the midst of this bleakness, Kennedy published his first and only collection of poetry, The Shrouding, in 1933. The collection was reprinted in 1975, and shows his indebtedness to T. S. Eliot and other modernist poets. Kennedy also contributed to New Provinces, published in 1936, which firmly pointed Canadian poetry in the modernist direction. Kennedy’s poems have been described as haunting and well-crafted.
Kennedy, critical of fellow writers who seemed too detached from the social issues of the day, founded the leftist journal The New Frontier in 1936. Besides social criticism, he wrote reviews and continued to write witty verse under various pseudonyms. Interestingly, this social critic moved to Chicago in 1940 to work as a writer for a New York advertising firm. Here he married his second wife, Esther Nichamin, with whom he had a son, Peter, and a, daughter Deborah. Later the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Kennedy was a copywriter for Reader’s Digest.
When he retired in 1978, Kennedy at last returned to Montreal, where he continued to write poems, often for children and often witty or satiric. In his essays he increasingly argued for poetry as a corrective force in society, condemning his own earlier indulgence in abstractions. His plan to write his memoirs was abandoned due to illness. Instead, Kennedy returned to the United States and settled in Pasadena, California, where he died in 2000. Kennedy will be remembered less for his poetry and a handful of short stories and more for his voice that, as part of the Montreal Group, influenced the evolution of modern Canadian verse.