Kenneth Adolphe (Schloesser) Slessor OBE (1901-1971)

Kenneth Adolphe (Ken) Slessor OBE formerly Schloesser

Born 27 Mar 1901 in Orange, New South Wales, Australia

Son of Robert (Schloesser) Slessor and Margaret Ella A (McInnes) Slessor

Brother of Unnamed Slessor and Maud M Slessor

Husband of Noëla Beatrice Myer Ewart (Glasson) Slessor — married 1922 in Ashfield, New South Wales, Australia

Husband of Catherine Pauline (Wallace) Slessor — married 1951 (to 1961) in Chatswood, New South Wales, Australia

[children unknown]

Died 30 Jun 1971 at age 70 in North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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Profile last modified 10 Jan 2024 | Created 30 Jul 2019

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1 Biography
2 Sources
3 See also

Biography

Ken (Schloesser) Slessor OBE is Notable.

Ken (Schloesser) Slessor OBE has Jewish Roots.

Kenneth Slessor OBE was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in the Second World War. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry. The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is named after him.

'Five Visions of Captain Cook' was the most dramatic break-through
in Australian poetry of the twentieth century.
– Douglas Stewart

formative years

Kenneth Adolphe Schloesser was born on 27th March 1901 in Orange, New South Wales, just weeks after the six British Colonies on the continent federated to become the Commonwealth of Australia. ^[1] Ken was the eldest of three surviving children of Robert Schloesser, a Jewish mining engineer, and his native-born wife Margaret Ella McInnes, whose parents came from the Hebrides. The family moved to Sydney in 1903. As a boy, Ken lived in England for a time with his parents and back in Australia visited the mines of rural New South Wales with his father. Ken, a voracious reader, began writing poetry as a child and edited a school magazine while at Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore). Robert changed the family name to Slessor in 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War to lessen the Germanic-sound. Ken attended Mowbray House School (1910-14) and the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (1915-18), during which time he began to write poetry.

Kenneth Slessor

literary career

Ken was a journalist, editor, war correspondent and poet

Slessor made his living as a newspaper journalist, mostly for The Sun, but also for the Herald, the Punch and the Daily Telegraph. As a war correspondent during the Second World War (1939–1945) he reported not only from Australia but from Libya, Egypt, Greece, Syria and New Guinea. Slessor also wrote on rugby league football for the popular publication Smith's Weekly. After the war, instead of writing poetry, Slessor chose to concentrate on journalism and supporting literary projects whose aim was to help develop Australian poetry. He was editor (1956-61) of the literary magazine Southerly and, with John Thompson and R G Howarth, edited an anthology, The Penguin Book of Australian Verse (Melbourne, 1958), revised as The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Verse (Melbourne, 1961). A selection of his work, One Hundred Poems, was published in 1944 and, with the addition of his final three poems in 1957 has been re-printed many times as Selected Poems. ^[2] Slessor served (1953-71) on the advisory board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund. Ironically, he agreed to serve on the National Literature Board of Review (a Commonwealth government censorship board) in 1967 because he had always opposed censorship. ^[3]

In the 1959 New Year Honours, Slessor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature. ^[4]

Writing poetry is a pleasure, ... a pleasure out of hell.
– Kenneth Slessor

marriages

On 18th August 1922 in Ashfield, New South Wales, at the age of 21, Ken married 28-year-old Noëla Senior, daughter of Australian soprano and music composer May Summerbelle and executed double murderer, Edwin Glasson. ^[5] Noëla died of cancer on 22nd October 1945.

Ken married a second time, to Pauline Wallace in 1951 in Chatswood, New South Wales; ^[6] and a year later celebrated the birth of his only child, Paul, before the marriage dissolved in 1961. In the late 1960s Pauline, who was suffering from cirrhosis, returned to live in the Slessor family home at Chatswood with Ken and Paul—but as a housekeeper.

death and legacy

Slessor passed away suddenly of a heart attack on 30th June 1971 in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, North Sydney, New South Wales. His ashes were placed next to those of Noëla in Rookwood Cemetery. ^[7] His son survived him and inherited his estate, sworn for probate at $99,216.

He is remembered and honoured in his local community through Kenneth Slessor Park, Chatswood (formerly known as Western Park and part of the Fuller Estate).

Kenneth Slessor Drive, Glenmore Park, New South Wales has also been named in his honour.

According to poet Douglas Stewart, Slessor's poem "Five Visions of Captain Cook" ^[8] is equally as important as "Five Bells" and was the 'most dramatic break-through' in Australian poetry of the twentieth century.^[9] The first 'vision' is included here:

"Cook was a captain of the Admiralty

When sea-captains had the evil eye,

Or should have, what with beating krakens off

And casting nativities of ships;

Cook was a captain of the powder-days

When captains, you might have said, if you had been

Fixed by their glittering stare, half-down the side,

Or gaping at them up companionways,

Were more like warlocks than a humble man—

And men were humble then who gazed at them,

Poor horn-eyed sailors, bullied by devils’ fists

Of wind or water, or the want of both,

Childlike and trusting, filled with eager trust—

Cook was a captain of the sailing days

When sea-captains were kings like this,

Not cold executives of company-rules

"Cracking their boilers for a dividend

Or bidding their engineers go wink

At bells and telegraphs, so plates would hold

Another pound. Those captains drove their ships

By their own blood, no laws of schoolbook steam,

Till yards were sprung, and masts went overboard—

Daemons in periwigs, doling magic out,

Who read fair alphabets in stars

Where humbler men found but a mess of sparks,

Who steered their crews by mysteries

And strange, half-dreadful sortilege with books,

Used medicines that only gods could know

The sense of, but sailors drank

In simple faith. That was the captain

Cook was when he came to the Coral Sea

And chose a passage into the dark.

"How many mariners had made that choice

Paused on the brink of mystery! ‘Choose now!’

The winds roared, blowing home, blowing home,

Over the Coral Sea. ‘Choose now!’ the trades

Cried once to Tasman, throwing him for choice

Their teeth or shoulders, and the Dutchman chose

The wind’s way, turning north. ‘Choose, Bougainville!’

The wind cried once, and Bougainville had heard

The voice of God, calling him prudently

Out of the dead lee shore, and chose the north,

The wind’s way. So, too, Cook made choice,

Over the brink, into the devil’s mouth,

With four months’ food, and sailors wild with dreams

Of English beer, the smoking barns of home.

So Cook made choice, so Cook sailed westabout,

So men write poems in Australia."

Sources

↑ New South Wales Birth Index #15491/1901
↑ Slessor, Kenneth. 'Selected Poems'. HarperCollins, 2014. ISBN 978 0 7322 9936 1
↑ Jaffa, Herbert C. Kenneth Slessor: A Critical Study, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1977, p22
↑ Australian Honours; accessed 15 Jun 2021
↑ New South Wales Marriage Index #10321/1922
↑ New South Wales Marriage Index #25702/1951
↑ New South Wales Death Index #56356/1971
↑ Five Visions of Captain Cook by Kenneth Slessor; accessed 15 Jun 2021
↑ Jaffa, Herbert C. Kenneth Slessor: A Critical Study, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1977, p20

Kenneth Adolphe (Schloesser) Slessor OBE (1901 - 1971)

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