Leo Kennedy

John Leo Kennedy (August 22, 1907 – 2000) was a Canadian poet and critic, who in the 1920s and 1930s was a member of the Montreal Group of modernist poets. The Canadian Encyclopedia says of him that "Kennedy helped change the direction of Canadian poetry in the 1920s."

Life Born in Liverpool, Kennedy emigrated with his family – his father, John Kennedy, a ship chandler, and his mother, Lillian Bullen – to Canada in 1912. Leo Kennedy quit school at 14, after having to repeat Grade 6; "he took to the sea and held a variety of jobs." At the same time, "he was admitted to the Montreal campus of Laval (now the Université de Montréal), where he studied English for two years."

Montreal Group

"While working at various jobs, Kennedy became affiliated with Leon Edel and others in the McGill Group" or Montreal Group.

In 1931 Kennedy became friends with novelist and poet Raymond Knister when the latter moved to Montreal. Kennedy and Knister began planning an anthology, similar to Knister's Canadian Short Stories (1928), of Canadian modernist poetry. Knister died the next year, but Scott and Smith got involved in the project. In 1933, at the urging of poet E.J. Pratt, Macmillan published The Shrouding," Kennedy's one poetry book. It was dedicated to Knister.

Books, Stories The Shrouding. Macmillan, Toronto 1933; Golden Dog, Ottawa 1975 Sunset in the States. Diane, 1972 in German, transl. Marta Hackel: Ein Priester in der Familie, (A priest in the family) engl.: Canadian Forum, April 1933; german: 89 Autoren erzählen. Die schönsten Kurzgeschichten aus aller Welt. vol. 1, Reader's Digest (=Das Beste), Stuttgart 1974 pp 261–269