Author Description

Kenneth Slessor has long been hailed as one of Australia's finest and most important poets. But the terms of praise have often echoed Slessor's own aesthetic principles--that poetry transcends social and political issues; that poetry is imbued with magic; that poetry should deal with 'verities' assumed to be 'eternal'. Caesar approaches Slessor's work from a different angle, by re-reading and re-writing aspects of his biography he places both Slessor's life and his work in political and cultural context. He also demonstrates that the conflicts at work in Slessor's life and art have a relevance to an understanding of Australian society in the first half of this century.