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 1987Birth 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 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 atLater 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 ''The dark soul goes lonely,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".
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.
Last years
In 1962,Australian Dictionary of Biography Online EditionReferences
Bibliography
*''Everyman his own Hamlet'' (1951) *''The Instant's Clarity'' (1952) *''Apocalypse in Springtime'' (1956) *''There was a Crooked Man : the Poems of Lex Banning'' (1984) {{DEFAULTSORT:Banning, Lex 1921 births 1965 deaths People with cerebral palsy Australian writers with disabilities 20th-century Australian poets Australian male poets Australian people of Belgian descent Australian people of Scottish descent Australian people of Swedish descent University of Sydney alumni 20th-century Australian male writers