Kenneth Slessor
Kenneth Slessor, born on March 27, 1901, in Orange, New South Wales, was a prominent Australian poet and journalist known for his significant contributions to modern poetry. He began his literary career at a young age, publishing poems that celebrated Australia's involvement in World War I. Despite not attending university, Slessor was deeply influenced by Romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth, which shaped his poetic style characterized by ornate language and vivid imagery, especially involving nature and art.
Slessor's dual career in journalism and poetry allowed him to explore themes of memory and the human condition, particularly during his experiences as a war correspondent in World War II. His notable works include "Five Bells," a poignant elegy reflecting on loss and memory, and "Beach Burial," which starkly addresses the devastation of war. Though much of his later life was devoted to journalism, Slessor's relatively small body of work—approximately one hundred poems—was instrumental in introducing European modernism to Australian literature. He passed away on June 30, 1971, leaving behind a legacy that has influenced the trajectory of Australian poetry.
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Kenneth Slessor
Poet
- Born: March 27, 1901
- Birthplace: Orange, New South Wales, Australia
- Died: June 30, 1971
- Place of death: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Biography
Kenneth Adolphe Schloesser was born March 27, 1901, in the remote town of Orange, New South Wales, Australia. His father was a mining consultant of German heritage who was born in London. He moved to Australia in 1888 and married a local schoolteacher. Given the nature of the elder Schloesser’s occupation, the family moved often (including a year in England). Schloesser’s education never extended into university—but at secondary school, he discovered the Romantic poets and developed a profound admiration for European poetics. While still in school, he published several poems that celebrated Australian participation in World War I (his father changed the family named to Slessor to avoid associating the family with the German aggression).
Determined to earn a living as a writer, Slessor left school in 1918 and began what would prove to be a long and successful career in journalism. He published a handful of philosophical poems on nature and art that clearly showed the influence of British poet William Wordsworth. In addition to publishing two slender chapbooks of poetry in the mid-1920’s, Slessor quickly established a reputation in journalism. In striking contrast to the unblinking realism of his newspaper work, his poetry expressed a transcendent appreciation of art as a redemptive act that empowered the magician-poet to transform the unpromising stuff of the immediate world. Slessor’s language is ornate, featuring lines embroidered with exotic symbols (particularly imagery of jewels and the sea).
Slessor’s journalism career took off. He accepted a position at Smith’s Weekly, which led eventually to an editorship. He pursued his dense poetic explorations on the nature of art even as he observed the rise of Hitler and the approach of war. In the pages of his newspaper, Slessor published lighter verse—witty observations about everyday life that revealed a playful sense of rhythm and rhyme. However, the title poem in Slessor’s 1939 collection Five Bells, a long, dense elegy for an artist-friend of Slessor’s drowned in a Sydney harbor accident, reveals the signature traits of Slessor’s serious work: a harrowing examination of the dynamic of memory and the stark evidence of humanity’s diminishment in the face of death.
Slessor covered World War II as a government correspondent and saw considerable action in the Mediterranean until, frustrated by censorship and the endless levels of government bureaucracy, he returned to Sydney and to his civilian journalism career. His war experience, however, led to his defining poem, the haunting “Beach Burial,” which tells of the interment of Australian sailors, their bodies burned beyond recognition, who had washed up on the Sydney beaches after a mid-ocean engagement.
Although he would gather his work into a number of collections over the next twenty years, Slessor wrote little new poetry, rather dedicating his time after the war to journalism (as well as commissioned travel books). At his death, on June 30, 1971, he was remembered for a slender body of work, barely one hundred poems, that nevertheless introduced European modernism—and its ornate imagery, its complex investigations into the nature of art itself, and its fierce intellectual dimension—into an Australian poetry that at the time was defined by Kiplingesque ballads, sentimental love poems, and lush landscape verse.