Filmmaker Chuck Lapp’s documentary, God’s Red Poet, on fascinating Pictou poet and activist Kenneth Leslie, runs Wednesday, July 2, 11pm, on VisionTV. According to his biography, Leslie, who was a child prodigy, attended Dalhousie University when he was 14, then went on to study philosophy and theology in the States during the late 1930s. That’s when the award-winning poet, disturbed by American pro-fascist and anti-Semitic sentiment, launched the progressive Protestant Digest; his socialist politics during the unforgiving Cold War era eventually landed him in Life magazine’s top 50 Communists, along with Arthur Miller and Albert Einstein. No wonder he came back to Nova Scotia in 1949, where he lived quietly until he passed away in 1974.
