"Five Bells" 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.
Outline
The poem is a meditative piece based on a ship's bell ringing five bells - which occurs at either 2:30, 6:30, 10:30, 14:30, 18:30 or 22:30. The poem is a reflection of the death of Slessor's friend Joe Lynch who drowned in Sydney Harbour in 1927.
Reviews
In her essay "'Living Backward' : Slessor and Masculine Elegy" 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 over life, the affection exposed for the scruffy, unruly, unimportant Irishman gives the poem a tender and human character."
Impact and legacy
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 Walesin 1999. The artist also painted Salute to Five Bells as a mural for the rear foyer area of the Sydney Opera House concert hall 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, which returned to me, like a remembered song, one midnight on a ferry in the centre of Circular Quay". The text of the poem is reproduced on a banister in in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood.
Seven Centuries of Poetry in English edited by John Leonard
Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Kathrine Bell
The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella
Harbour City Poems : Sydney in Verse, 1788-2008 edited by Martin Langford
Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Nicholas Jose, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Anita Heiss, David McCooey, Peter Minter, Nicole Moore, Elizabeth Webby
The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard
100 Australian Poems of Love and Loss edited by Jamie Grant
Australian Poetry Since 1788'' edited by Geoffrey Lehmann, Robert Gray
