The Life and Poetry of Kenneth Slessor
By Ned Young
The week before Remembrance Day I reflected on my memories of poetry by writing a story about First World War poet Leon Maxwell Gellert. Now, I want to focus on the Second World War poet and war correspondent Kenneth Slessor.
Portrait of Kenneth Slessor / Australian News and Information Bureau
National Library of Australia - PIC/8814 LOC Box PIC/8814
Born on the 27th of March 1901 to parents Robert and Margaret Schloesser, Kenneth was the eldest of three surviving siblings.i The family were of German-Jewish heritage, although were not particularly devoted to their Jewish origins. Kenneth’s father changed their family name from ‘Schloesser’ to ‘Slessor’ after the outbreak of World War Iii fearing that a name of German origin may cause his family unwarranted discrimination.
Slessor attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore School), editing the school magazine and publishing his own poetry. His first official publication appeared in The Bulletiniii in 1917 (Slessor was only 16 at the time). It was a dramatic monologue spoken through the eyes of a dying digger remembering Sydney Harbour and Manly Beach.iv At the age of just 17, Slessor surpassed a slew of local and international professionalsv to win the Victoria League’s Poetry Prize with his poem ‘Jerusalem Set Free’.
He graduated from school in 1918 with first-class honours in English, and immediately gained work as a cadet-journalist for the Sun newspaper.vi Over the next 4 years, Slessor had a great deal of his poetry published in various Australian newspapers and magazines. In 1922, he married 28-year-old Catholic Noëla Beatrice Myee Ewart Glasson, much to the dismay of his Presbyterian mother.vii
In 1924, Slessor’s first book Thief of the Moon was published. It was illustrated by his colleague and good friend Norman Lindsey (who also illustrated Leon Gellert’s work), and heavily inspired by the poetry of Hugh McCrae. Slessor believed Australian poetry only began to grow after the release of McCrae’s volume of poems Satyrs and Sunlight: Silvarum Libriviii, and not with the famous bush balladists such as Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson.ix Slessor continued his work as a journalist, writing for the Herald and editing Punch magazine. He joined Smith's Weekly newspaper in 1927, writing articles and film reviews before taking on the role of editor in 1935.x
Five Bells: XX Poems was Slessor’s sixth published book, and is widely regarded as his best work. ‘Five Bells’ draws inspiration from the drowning of Joe Lynch in Sydney Harbour in 1927.xi Lynch had worked with Slessor at Punch and Smith’s Weekly. He died after drunkenly throwing himself off a ferry and fighting off a would-be rescuer.xii
“I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.
Five bells”.
In 1940, Slessor was appointed war correspondent by the Commonwealth government. He began his service in North Africa, following Australian troops to Greece, Crete and eventually Syria.xiii He considered it a great honour to be amongst the troops, and gained a huge amount of respect and appreciation for the ‘ordinary soldier’. Slessor’s poetic voice translated even into the most horrific of correspondence. After the defeat of the German army at El Alamein, which saw the Allies lose upwards of 13,000 men, Slessor wrote:
“The road to ruin runs from Alamein to Gambut and points west. It is ruin, literal and absolute, a corridor of dusty death … this continuous mortuary of burnt metal and buried men”.xiv
He continued to write poetry abroad, albeit rarely. In El Alamein, Slessor wrote ‘Beach Burial’, dedicated to the tens of thousands of men on both sides of the conflict who lost their lives fighting in North Africa:
“And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,
Bears the last signature of men,
Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,
The words choke as they begin -
'Unknown seaman' - the ghostly pencil
Wavers and fades, the purple drips,
The breath of wet season has washed their inscriptions
As blue as drowned men's lips,
Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,
Whether as enemies they fought,
Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,
Enlisted on the other front”.
Slessor (second from the right) at work close to the front line after landing in New Guinea in September 1943
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Slessor followed Australian soldiers to New Guinea in 1943 to continue his correspondence. Having witnessed the true horrors of war in Africa and Europe, he began critiquing military leaders whose decisions he felt had caused the unnecessary loss of lives.xv This attitude is evident in his poem ‘An Inscription For Dog River’, a critique of Sir Thomas Blamey. The poem glorifies the forgotten role of the ordinary soldier, while disparaging the role of the General:
“Our general was the greatest and bravest of generals.
For his deeds, look around you on this coast—
Here is his name cut next to Ashur-Bani-Pal's,
Nebuchadnezzar's and the Roman host;
And we, though our identities have been lost,
Lacking the validity of stone or metal,
We, too, are part of his memorial,
Having been put in for the cost,
Having bestowed on him all we had to give
In battles few can recollect,
Our strength, obedience and endurance,
Our wits, our bodies, our existence,
Even our descendants' right to live—
Having given him everything, in fact,
Except respect.”
His criticisms were not well received by the army, who sought to discredit Slessor when he published an account of the operations leading up to the capture of Finschhafen.xvi He resigned from his position as war correspondent in early 1944 “in protest against the whole of the present attitude and working of the Army Public Relations Branch”.xvii The resignation was controversial enough to be mention in the House of Representatives.
Slessor was welcomed back as an editor of the Sun upon his resignation. In 1945, his wife Noëla died of cancer, leaving Slessor devastated. He remarried Catherine Wallace in 1951, but the marriage broke down and the couple divorced in 1961.xviii They did, however, give birth to Slessor’s only son, named Paul.
A selection of Slessor’s poetry, One Hundred Poems: 1919-1939, was published in 1944, and still serves today as the work Slessor is best remembered for. It was republished in 1947 under the titles Poems and Selected Poems.xix
Kenneth Slessor died of a heart attack in 1971. His ashes were placed next to those of his first wife Noëla. Since his death, much of his work has been posthumously published, including his war diaries and dispatches, edited by Clement Semmler in separate volumes, The War Diaries of Kenneth Slessor (Brisbane, 1985) and The War Despatches of Kenneth Slessor (Brisbane, 1987).xx
War Correspondent Kenneth Slessor
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References
i Dennis Haskell, 'Slessor, Kenneth Adolf (1901–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712/text20935, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 20 November 2019.
ii Ibid.
iii The Bulletin was an Australian magazine first published in 1880 and ceasing publication in 2008.
iv Dennis Haskell, 'Slessor, Kenneth Adolf (1901–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712/text20935, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 20 November 2019.
v The Richmond River Herald (1919), Australian Boy Poet, p.7.
vi The Sun was a daily newspaper based in Sydney. It ceased publication in 1988.
vii Dennis Haskell, 'Slessor, Kenneth Adolf (1901–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712/text20935, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 20 November 2019.
viii ‘Silvarum Libri’ - Latin for ‘Summary of the Woods’.
ix Dennis Haskell, 'Slessor, Kenneth Adolf (1901–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712/text20935, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 20 November 2019.
x Ibid.
xi Ibid.
xii Peter Kirkpatrick, 'Lynch, Joseph Young (Joe) (1897–1927)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lynch-joseph-young-joe-11405/text19311, published first in hardcopy 2000, accessed online 20 November 2019.
xiii Dennis Haskell, 'Slessor, Kenneth Adolf (1901–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712/text20935, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 20 November 2019.
xiv Clement Semmler (ed.), War despatches of Slessor, University of Queensland Press, 1987, p. 108.
xv Department of Veterans' Affairs (2018). Curiosity - Stories of those who report during wartime, p.20.
xvi Dennis Haskell, 'Slessor, Kenneth Adolf (1901–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712/text20935, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 20 November 2019.
xvii Ibid.
xviii Ibid.
xix Ibid.
xx Ibid.