KENNETH SLESSOR.

Kenneth Slessor (27 March 1901-30 June 1971) was born in Orange and his family moved to Sydney in 1903. Slessor attended Mowbray House School and the Sydney Church of England Grammar School where he began to write poetry. His first published poem was in 1917 about a digger in Europe, remembering Sydney and its icons. Slessor received his leaving certificate in 1918 and joined the Sydney Sun as a journalist.  Slessor made his living as a newspaper journalist, mostly for the Sydney Sun, and was a war correspondent during World War II. Slessor surrounded himself with company such as Norman Lindsay, Hugh McCrae and Jack Lindsay, all of whom are recognised as successful writers, artists and academics.
 Slessor’s work is greatly influenced by the changing cultural values associated with the modernist movement, the movement emanated from Europe as artists and writers had begun to move away from the norms or traditional styles of art and writing and experiment. The arrival of the machine age and The Great War left many artists with a feeling of emptiness and began to critique the more bleak and negative aspects of life through their artwork. Slessor’s is considered notable particularly for his absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry in order to move away from the typical bushman poetry.

 His surroundings also had an influence on a lot of Slessor’s poetry ‘Elegy in botanic Gardens’ and ‘Five Bells’ reflect the fact he lived in Sydney, as well as his love of the city-life. His admiration of Sydney Harbour and the sea is also seen throughout his poetry, especially when discussing themes of time and death, and can be considered a result of growing up near the water.
 The post-modernist movement in combination with Slessor’s job as a WWII war correspondent have a profound effect on the way Slessor writes as demonstrated particularly in Beach Burial.

The themes contained in Slessor’s poetry include time, death, memories, sleep, sensuality, memory and the human purpose in life. Slessor’s fascination with life and death is a common theme exhibited in the majority of early modernist texts in the early 20th century.  Other ideas such as the concepts of memories, time and sleep are all interrelated and are influenced a lot by Slessor’s memories and the belief that by remembering we can suspend ‘real time’ to relive the past in our own time.
 The content of Slessor’s work is influenced by his experiences, ‘Five Visions of Captain Cook’ was influenced by an old Captain friend of Slessor’s and his extensive library of Cook related material. This enabled Slessor to construct the extremely accurate character portrait using a vast array of allusions to actual events. Another poem ‘Five Bells’ was influenced by the death of Slessor’s friend Joe by drowning one night in Sydney Harbour.