Biography Zora Bernice May Cross

Poet Biography

Zora Cross was born in Brisbane, Queensland. She was educated at a number of schools in Brisbane and Sydney before attending Teachers' College. Zora taught primary school for some time, but left to give birth to her first child.

After the failure of her first marriage she eventually lived in a de facto marriage with David McKee Wright. Zora'a first book of poetry, A Song of Mother Love, was published in 1916. Songs of Love and life, a collection of love poetry thought at the time to be rather too frank, but which proved popular enough to appear is several editions, followed in 1917.

The 1920s saw the continuation of war poetry, both celebrating the exploits of the fighting men and lamenting the realities of war. Zora Cross’s Elegy on an Australian schoolboy, a poem about her young brother who was killed in the war, is an example of the latter. She is best-known for her 1917 book, Songs of love.

Zora Cross died in the Blue Mountain region of New South Wales in 1964