12 Facts About Kenneth Slessor

Kenneth Adolphe Slessor was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in World War II.

Kenneth Slessor was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry.

Kenneth Slessor's first published poem, "Goin'", about a wounded digger in Europe, remembering Sydney and its icons, appeared in The Bulletin in 1917.

Kenneth Slessor passed the 1918 NSW Leaving Certificate with first-class honours in English and joined the Sydney Sun as a journalist.

Kenneth Slessor made his living as a newspaper journalist, mostly for The Sun, and was a war correspondent during World War II.

Kenneth Slessor wrote on rugby league football for the popular publication Smith's Weekly.

Kenneth Slessor prefers chiselled stone to the disorganization of grass.

In 1944 he published his definitive volume of poetry, One Hundred Poems, and from that point on Kenneth Slessor published only three short poems.

Kenneth Slessor counted Norman Lindsay, Hugh McCrae and Jack Lindsay among his friends.

At the age of 21, Kenneth Slessor married 28-year-old Noela Beatrice Myer Ewart Glasson was born on 25 December 1893 and in Ashfield, Sydney, on 18 August 1922.

Kenneth Slessor married Pauline Wallace in 1951; and a year later celebrated the birth of his only child, Paul Slessor, before the marriage dissolved in 1961.

Kenneth Slessor died suddenly of a heart attack on 30 June 1971 at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, North Sydney.