Arthur Alexander Banning (1921–1965) was an Australian lyric poet.
Disabled from birth by
cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, spasticity, stiff muscles, Paresis, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be p ...
, he was unable to speak clearly or to write with a pen. "Yet he overcame his handicap to produce poems which were often hauntingly beautiful and frequently ironic, and gave to other, younger poets a strong sense of the importance and value of their calling".Page 337, Baldwin S (ed) ''Unsung Heroes and Heroines of Australia'' Greenhouse, Vic 1988 (for the Australian Bicentennial Authority) Such younger poets included
Clive James
Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Les Murray and
Geoffrey Lehmann
Geoffrey Lehmann (born 28 June 1940) is an Australian poet, children's writer, and tax lawyer. Lehmann grew up in McMahon's Point, Sydney, and attended the Shore School in North Sydney. He graduated in arts and law from the University of Sydn ...
.
Early life
A note on sources
By good fortune, one of Banning's closest friends was the late Richard Appleton ("Appo"), a bohemian writer and ''raconteur'' who met the poet in Sydney's Lincoln coffee lounge, about 1950. Appleton later became editor-in-chief of the ''Australian Encyclopaedia'' and, in 1983, was co-editor with Alex Galloway of the posthumous Banning collection ''There Was a Crooked Man'' which includes reliable biographical information. In writing this, Appleton received the benefit of access to a collection of letters in the possession of Dr Anne Banning.Appleton, Richard "Lex Banning 1921–1965: a brief biography" in ''There Was a Crooked Man'', ed. R. Appleton and C. Galloway; Angus & Robertson Publishers 1987
Birth and disability
Lex Banning was born in Sydney on 27 June 1921. His mother was half-Swedish, half Scots. His father (who died when Lex was aged four) was Belgian. His disability was cerebral palsy of a type brought about by insufficiency of oxygen in the bloodstream during or soon after birth. Though this resulted in little or no intellectual impairment, he was afflicted by involuntary movements and poor co-ordination of arms, neck and face, because of which his speech was laboured and hard to understand. The disabilities were ultimately no barrier to effective communication nor to the respect and admiration of people who knew him.
Education and early career
The family home was in the Sydney suburb of
Punchbowl Punchbowl is an alternative spelling of punch bowl, a large bowl for serving drinks, or may refer to:
Topography
*Punchbowl, a type of waterfall
Places
* Punchbowl, Korea, valley and site of 1950s battles
*Punchbowl, New South Wales, suburb of Sy ...
and Lex attended ordinary state primary and secondary schools through which he acquired superior reading skills and was introduced to encyclopaedias. Though denied a full secondary education, at the age of sixteen he was found a job at the Sydney Observatory. There, he learned to type and was able to qualify for admittance to the Faculty of Arts at
Sydney University
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
as an unmatriculated student in 1944. He graduated in 1948 with honours in English and history. He was an active and enthusiastic participant in university affairs, including writing for and editing university publications. A poem of his, ''1946'', appeared in the 1946 university Arts Society annual '' Arna''.
Later career and associations
Later, Banning worked as a librarian at the Spastic Centre while also writing for print, radio, film and television. He was a regular associate of Sydney Push and media personalities including close friend and biographer Richard Appleton, Joy Anderson, Robert Hughes, Piers Bourke, John Croyston, Mike and Marjorie Hourihan and Brian Jenkins. Accomplished jazz musician Ray Price and his distinguished wife Nadine Amadio were also close friends.
Poetry
For Lex Banning, the fundamental task of poetry was compression, to which end the poet's skills and artifices were instrumental. He greatly admired the Japanese ''
haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, ...
'' form and its supreme exponent,
Matsuo Bashō
born then was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative '' haikai no renga'' form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest m ...
; and the Alexandrian Greek poet C. P. Cavafy. To a lecturer who described poetry as "not the wine but the brandy of literature", Banning sternly interjected:"Not the brandy ... the ''cognac''!".Rendered as "not the wine but the cognac" by Les Murray in his poem ''Sidere Mens Eadem Mutato'' For, notwithstanding his own physical disability, Banning was the toughest of critics and no respecter of personalities. His acerbic wit was frequently expressed in blunt conversation, and some of his satirical verse did not bear publication for that reason.Galloway Alex "Introduction to the Poems" in ''There Was a Crooked Man'', 1987
Galloway observes that "the purity of the poem remains his concern as he expunges the element of self-expression in favour of the universal" and invites consideration of these lines from ''The Dark Soul'' (1951):
The dark soul goes lonely,
it seeks, but cannot find
its heart's desire among the whirling
planets of the mind.
For mind is as a universe,
a bounded, boundless place,
but a prison to the dark soul
that never finds its grace;
not though it search for ever,
or the small space of a breath,
for the soul is immortal,
and what it seeks is death.
Galloway concludes: " compiling this collection, I have come to understand his appeal. His sculptured verse is wrought from figures of the past, from acute seeing in the now, from awareness of the significance of shadows which give meaning and dimension to the structure of images. You may hear the voice of thought, see the vision of clear sight, feel the brooding presence of an entity beyond the immediate grasp of the mind, and glimpse the monstrous and the beautiful apprehension allowed to a poet".
Last years
In 1962,Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition /ref> he travelled to London and married Australian paediatrician Anne Ferry. Through senior medical contacts who admired his poetry, Banning was invited to visit the Aegean Islands aboard a luxury yacht and develop his interest in palaeontology and his love of the work of Constantine P. Cavafy. However, the marriage foundered and Banning returned to Sydney in 1964, to live alone in a small flat at
Darlinghurst
Darlinghurst is an inner-city, eastern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Darlinghurst is located immediately east of the Sydney central business district (CBD) and Hyde Park, within the local government area of the City of Syd ...
. He became depressed and unwell before his sudden death less than a year later on 2 November 1965.