Five Bells (poem)
| by Kenneth Slessor | |
| Written | 1939 |
|---|---|
| First published in | Five Bells : XX Poems |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 1939 |
"Five Bells" (1939) is a meditative poem by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor. It was originally published as the title poem in the author's collection Five Bells : XX Poems, and later appeared in numerous poetry anthologies.
The poem is a meditative piece based on a ship's bell ringing five bells - which occurs at either 10:30am or 10:30 pm. The poem is a reflection of the death of Slessor's friend Joe Lynch who drowned in Sydney Harbour in 1927.
In her essay "'Living Backward' : Slessor and Masculine Elegy" (1997) Kate Lilley noted: "Chronologically displaced, “Five Bells” is repositioned and reread as the generically appropriate marker of the premature end of Slessor's career, and also as the aesthetically satisfying rhetorical proof of his poetic achievement. But the discursive meaning and affect generated by, and attributed to, Slessor's elegy exceed the boundaries of even the most expansive consideration of Slessor as poet, while also being disconnected from an analysis of genre."
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature stated: "Although the emphasis is on the impermanence of all human relationships and thus the triumph of time (moved by 'little fidget wheels') over life, the affection exposed for the scruffy, unruly, unimportant Irishman gives the poem a tender and human character."
Inspired by the poem the Australian artist John Olsen completed his painting Five Bells on commission in 1963. It was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1999. The artist also painted Salute to Five Bells as a mural for the Sydney Opera House in 1973.
The Australian author Gail Jones wrote a novel titled Five Bells in 2011, and noted in her acknowledgments: "The first debt of this project is to Kenneth Slessor's elegiac poem, Five Bells (1939), which returned to me, like a remembered song, one midnight on a ferry in the centre of Circular Quay".
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