Kenneth Slessor – Very Detailed Poem Analysis

Resource Description

Overview
Kenneth Slessor’s suite of poetry delves into the complexities of the human experience; focusing on our insecurities, the anguishes associated with living, the questions which remain, but also how the viscerality of feeling pain and doubt reminds us that we are human. His images are vivid and immediate, leaping off the page in a confrontational way to transport us into various settings through various explicit and anonymous personas in order to invite us to challenge presumptions and engage in a process of introspection – what does it mean to be human and to experience emotions that may be unsettling?
His poetry represents individual and collective human experiences by tapping into universal feelings that we all share as well as zeroing in on specific personal subjectivities. He captures the passing of time, a sense of discomfort and the reduction of humanity to its vulnerabilities while also revealing our perseverance and grit. He urges us to see the world differently by not retreating from the ugly, the sordid and the unpleasant but rather to acknowledge that it exists. His poetry sheds light on human motivation and behaviour as a way of highlighting the paradoxes and anomalies present within the experience of living.