Backless Betty from Bondi

Variously called Australia's first modern poet, the father of modern Australian poetry, and "the master craftsman of them all," Kenneth Slessor continues to be admired in Australia and abroad for a comparatively small body of work. Yet one of his critics, Herbert C. Jaffa, has said that "some of [Slessor's] poems are among the most important written in English in modern literature." His work has been praised for its startling images, for its melding of the emotional and intellectual, for its brilliant language, and for the control it exercises over the poetic process. Slessor drew from his Australian experience for the most part, but lent that experience a universality not always present in the country's earlier poetry. Two of his poems, which many readers consider examples of Australia's finest poetry, are frequently anthologized: "Five Bells," an elegy for a friend, and "Beach Burial," a chilling and unforgettable reminder of the horrors of war. Except for light verse, Slessor wrote no poetry for the last 25 years of his life. Born in Australia, he was a journalist by profession and spent most of his life in Sydney, where he worked on newspapers in various positions, including a distinguished tenure as a book reviewer. In World War II he served as an overseas correspondent for a Sydney newspaper. The dispatches and diary of his experiences have been collected in The War Diaries. Through his work as an editor and critic, along with his active involvement in literary circles, Slessor exerted a strong and lasting influence during a critical juncture in the development of Australian literature. 020