Biography of Francis Kenna

Francis Kenna (21 September 1865 – 23 June 1932), was an Australian poet, journalist, and Labor Member of the Legislative Assembly in Queensland. He edited the "Brisbane Worker".

He published Banjo, of the Overflow, a parody of Banjo Paterson's Clancy of the Overflow in 1892, as part of the Bulletin Debate about the true nature of life in the Australian bush. Like many of his poems (including those later published in Phases), it was first published in the Sydney Bulletin.

In 1907 he married Edith Elvira Stamp; they had two sons, Herbert and Vernon. Kenna died in 1932 and was buried in Lutwyche Cemetery.

Works

Songs of a season (1895, Melville, Mullen & Slade; Melbourne)

Phases (1915, Thos S Laidler, NSW)

Poems (no year)

Queensland authors and artists' Xmas magazine (no year; Watson Ferguson, Brisbane) edited by Francis Kenna and issued by the Queensland Authors and Artists Association.

References

Australian National Bibliographical Database (which has 8 entries for works by or about Kenna).

External links

Works by Francis Kenna at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

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Golden Days
 by Robert Service

Another day of toil and strife,
Another page so white,
Within that fateful Log of Life
That I and all must write;
Another page without a stain
To make of as I may,
That done, I shall not see again
Until the Judgment Day.
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