The Essential Kenneth Leslie

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The Porcupine's Quill, May 14, 2014 - Poetry - 64 pages
In a career that spanned more than half a century, Kenneth Leslie published six books of poetry, including By Stubborn Stars, which won the Governor-General’s medal in 1938. He also created The Protestant, one of the more controversial political publications of the 1930s and ’40s, which earned him a national reputation in the United States as well as the unwanted attention of the FBI. ‘God’s Red Poet’ also produced a mass circulation anti-fascist comic book, and composed the words and music for ‘Cape Breton Lullaby’, a well-known popular song. Among his less successful ventures were a ‘Broadway’ musical, which collapsed in rehearsals, and a few dozen other songs which did not sell in Tin Pan Alley.
 

Contents

Foreword
7
Open Lading
11
New Song
12
By Stubborn Stars
13
Success
27
The Preacher
28
Halibut Cove Harvest
29
The Hill Heart
30
Lowlands
45
Beauty Is Something You Can Weigh in Scales
47
Cape Breton Lullaby
48
Rorys Praise of Elspeth
49
Jesus Thought Long
50
Guide
51
The Old
52
Tasseled Thought
53

The Word Had Need of Flesh
31
Cobweb College
32
Tea with the Professor
38
Harlem Preacher
39
The Candy Maker
40
Windward Rock
41
It Cannot Be Easy
42
Sorrow Must Sing
43
To My Father Drowned at
44
Early Summer Storm
54
Requiescam
55
Lirs Daughter
56
The Computer
57
Last Sleep
58
No Poem Is Ever Ended
59
About Kenneth Leslie
61
About Zachariah Wells
63
Copyright

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About the author (2014)

Kenneth Leslie (October 31, 1892 - October 6, 1974) was a Canadian poet and political activist who came to be known as "God’s Red Poet". During a career spanning more than half a century, Leslie published six books of poetry, including By Stubborn Stars and Other Poems, for which we won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1938.

Zachariah Wells was born on September 10, 1976 in Charlottetown and raised in Hazel Grove, Prince Edward Island. At the age of fifteen he left home to attend high school in Ottawa and has since lived in many parts of Canada (Halifax, Iqaluit, Montreal, Resolute Bay and Vancouver), working as a freelance writer/editor and in various occupations in the transportation sector. Wells received an International Baccalaureate Diploma from Ashbury College and a BA in English from Dalhousie University/University of King’s College in 1999. He first started writing poems seriously in 1998. His poems, reviews and essays have been published and anthologized widely. He is the author of three chapbooks (Fool’s Errand, Saturday Morning Chapbooks, 2004; Ludicrous Parole, Mercutio Press, 2005; and After the Blizzard, Littlefishcart Press, 2008); two trade poetry collections (Unsettled, Insomniac Press, 2004; and Track & Trace, Biblioasis, 2009) and the children’s story Anything But Hank! (Biblioasis, 2008). He is also the editor of the anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets. With his wife and son, he lives in Halifax, the only city he likes well enough to have moved to three times, where he works seasonally for Via Rail Canada as an onboard attendant and edits reviews for Canadian Notes & Queries magazine.

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