Penn Kemp

Moss Trill

In Our Back Yard

Reading The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert. Past mass extinctions and now

the sixth. Frogs and toads, myriad amphibians in
garish armour warning of poison, or mottled dun

Gone in an evolutionary flash.

Toad tadpoles in our pond were just developing
arms when they all… disappeared. Overnight

racoons? Drowning? I know I am responsible
somehow. NIMB, the warning close to home.

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The Rolling Blog Tour Stops Here… for a week!

The Rolling Blog Tour Stops Here… for a week!

July 14, 2014.  My thanks to Debbie Hill for inviting me on this Virtual Blog Tour. Her own excellent presentation is on http://okunhill.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/all-aboard-hop-on-the-my-writing-process-blog-tour/ and reposted on my WordPress blog on July 8.  Debbie asked me to write about my writing process and then introduce three writers and their blogs.  These writers will in turn write for the rolling blog tour on their blogs July 21 and introduce more writers on their websites.  And so it goes…

To see my choices, scroll down.  Enjoy and happy writing!

 The Questions…

1)  What am I working on?

Gathering Voices, my lit.-on-air radio show is heard on alternate Tuesdays at 6:30 AM and PM on CHRW, Radio Western, 94.9 FM and online. For upcoming programs and archived shows, see: http://chrwradio.ca/content/upcoming-episodes-gathering-voices. The complete schedule is up now for the rest of 2014 on https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/gathering-voices-on-radio-western/.

AlvegoRoot Theatre will be directing and producing my play, “Heart P’Art” in 2015. The play portrays my father, painter Jim Kemp, and London’s arts community of the mid-20th century. It will be directed by Adam Adam Corrigan Holowitz. Produced by AlvegoRoot Theatre Company.

Jim Kemp’s paintings were in the London Visual Fringe, June 3 – 14, 2014 at The Arts Project, http://www.londonfringe.ca/schedule/visual-fringe‎. Videography for the play is by Dennis Siren: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JoNJmilHnE&feature=youtu.be.

Tall Poppies by Jim Kemp

Thanks to The Grand Theatre for a OAC theatre reserve grant for writing. “Homeward Bound”, another take on this play will be part of the Playwrights Cabaret at the McManus Theatre in London, January, 2015. We will be workshopping this piece at the Grand Theatre in the Fall.

“Heart P’Art”: This celebratory play about London painter Jim Kemp’s last week takes place in University Hospital. Dying in our culture is passed over in denial, but the gathering family experiences conflicting emotions ranging through memory, humour, and lament. A resolution in ritual acknowledges the importance of this most profound life passage. This play celebrates art and London’s artistic community mid-twentieth century and the spectrum of a life lived full-throttle, with humour.

Upcoming Events are posted on www.mytown.ca/pennletters.

Poems are posted on www.mytown.ca/pennkemp.

2)  How does my work differ from others of its genre? Why do I write what I do?

See Stan Burfield’s interview with me on http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/season-2-interviews–poems-only-from-dec-4th-2013/1 and Kathryn Mockler’s interview with me on http://www.therustytoque.com/rusty-talk/penn-kemp-poet.

3)  How does your writing process work?

This summer, I am writing poems for Dream Sequins. Five of these poems are up on http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/season-2-interviews–poems-only-from-dec-4th-2013/1. I write best early in the morning, when dreams are still vivid. I’m finding it tricky to convey the bizarre narrative of dream into a language that reflects the adventure but is not limited to a straightforward recounting of the dream.

Usually, my process is to follow the sound throughout a poem rather than a theme.  I find the resonance that the poem wishes to convey and follow that sound down the rabbit hole and back again…

4)  And here are the Guest Bloggers for Next Week’s Tour!

Three of my favourite activist writers!  On their blogs, Monday July 21, they will respond to the questions on writing and introduce new bloggers.

1. My first guest is the indefatigable Edward Pickersgill. His Sanity Claws News Network Magazine is on https://www.facebook.com/sanityclawsnewsnetwork: a c(l)ause for sanity.

Edward Pickersgill, aka John “Underling” Doe, born in Glasgow Scotland, has been in Canada since 1957 at age 12.  Long an anti-poverty activist, Ed oversees the 40 Baker Street community centre in downtown Guelph ON, Additional information is available via the usual highly suspect search engines.

2, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Sophia Bonnie Wodin.

Sophia is a spiritually oriented therapist, writer and teacher who delights in weaving together strands of the natural, physical reality with the journey to spiritual and emotional empowerment and wholeness.  Check out her beautiful www.sophiabonniewodin.blogspot.com.

3. My third guest writer is Stan Burfield, who does yeoman service for poets in London ON, my home town.  

Stan is a farm boy from Alberta, one-time adventurer, reporter, florist, currently organizer of London Open Mic Poetry Night and part time support worker for people with autism and developmental disorders. Take a look at his blog on his very informative site, http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/. 

Next Monday, July 21, check out Stan’s, Edward’s and Sophia’s own Blog Tours. They will introduce upcoming blogger writers there, and then!

 

 

 

Interview on www.therustytoque

Kathryn Mockler’s interview with me on http://www.therustytoque.com/rusty-talk/penn-kemp-poet.

London, Ontario performance poet, activist and playwright Penn Kemp is the 40th Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets. This year she received the Queen Elizabeth 11 Diamond Jubilee medal for service to the arts. Penn has published twenty-five books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs produced as well as Canada’s first poetry CD-ROM and several award-winning videopoems. As the inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of London, she initiated and judged Poetry in Motion and the National Haiku Competition. As Canada Council Writer-in-Residence for University of Western Ontario for 2009-10, her project was the DVD, Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action, Pendas Productions.

RUSTY TALK WITH PENN KEMP

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Penn Kemp: I remember my own early discovery of and delight in language. As a child, I did not coddle my dolls. I sat them up and read the poems, stories and nursery rhymes my mother had read to me. The words she read would sink into the well of my hearing and become part of me; their rhythms would dance inside my body like northern lights. I ate up those words with a necessity as strong as hunger. Even at first hearing, the words were somehow familiar as if I recognized in them old friends. I remember swelling proudly with the power of words, in learning first to read and then actually to write, to put down the letters so that they made sense to anyone who could read.

I wrote my first poem when I was six, excited and amazed at having created through apparent magic something out of nothing with marks on a page accompanied by a drawing of kids skating. I glimpsed a world in which words had a life of their own, just as toys did. I knew that if I could wake at the right time at night I would catch my toys at play. So too, I felt words could be surprised and brought to life on the page.

Writing that first poem was the first time that I recall consciously feeling that I was doing an adult thing ­creating something entirely on my own, assuming independence ­ growing up!  I felt like the Little Red Hen in the nursery story:  “‘I can do it myself,’ said The Little Red Hen, and she did.”

KM: What keeps you going as a poet or why do you write?                      
PK: When I write, I begin an adventure equipped with my writing tools and everything else I know about myself and the world. By the end of the day, everything I knew and thought may be transformed­ or discarded. It intrigues me that what I know and start off with is the very means for realizing what is unknown.

I write to articulate the moment, to puzzle out feelings or incidents I can’t figure out. The best poems come, though, when I follow the language of a striking phrase. Sound leads me.

KM: Could you describe your writing process? (For example, do you write every day? When? Where? How do you approach revision, etc.)
PK: I write every day, in the morning, in the little room that was my childhood bedroom. It looks out on a small greenhouse, a source of inspiration and delight all year. The green throughout the winter keeps me from getting restless and hungry for sun. Often in the morning as I transcribe dreams, they become poems. They’re not usually very good poems so they don’t see the light of day beyond a file in my computer, but they keep the energy of poetry flowing. The problem I have with them is that they are too narrative and I feel I need to stick to the literal story line that the dream gave me. 

I revise constantly, even when I am performing, pencil often in hand. Reading the poem in front of an audience allows me to really hear what works…and what does not.

My first book, Bearing Down, was performed in four voices for a Seattle FM radio show in 1973. That performance opened up the door to possibilities for the spoken word in those early days. I’ve been lifting the word off the page any way I could since then, most recently in videopoems. But the ear remains my first love. Concentrating on the voice rather than gesture or physical presence in communicating poetry has taught me to listen acutely, and that’s had an effect not just on my sound poetry but on all my work. Collaborating with artists of different disciplines is exciting and energizing. And with the Cloud, friends and fans can hear the work in Brazil, in India, in Britain simultaneously!”

KM; What writers were influential to you when you first started out? And what poets are you reading now?
PK: Victor Coleman, the editor at Coach House Press and a neighbour on Toronto Island, was influential and encouraging in introducing me to the poetic community across North America.  My first book, Bearing Down, came out from Coach House, 1972. I organized a poetry reading series at A SPACE in Toronto for several years in the early Seventies. I invited poets I admired, like P. K. Page, Phyllis Webb, Daphne Marlatt, all of whom became friends and correspondents. In those days, the Canada Council sponsored American poets so I invited heroes like Diane di Prima, Allan Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and Edward Dorn, all very influential.

I read avidly and widely as poetry continues to inspire new poems.  These days I edit quite a few manuscripts for poets, and I read poets coming to London as well as books for my literary radio show, Gathering Voices. And new books coming out: I particularly like Brick Books. 

KM: Your funniest literary moment, if you have one.
PK: The funniest literary moment happened this year on January 11 at 8.30am.  As Poet Laureate for the City of London, I was formally addressing 1200 folks at the Mayor’s STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS” at the London Convention Centre. The topic was “Believe…”.  Well, I couldn’t believe the three very audible interruptions! They turned out to be the complaints of a Russian robot. It was squawking in Russian that its battery was wound down. I kept on talking: you can see the situation on livestream.

KM: What are you working on now?
PK: I wish I could say that I’m finishing a manuscript and I am, slowly, but the times demand I continue as an activist in protesting federal budget cuts.

So I’m organizing a reading Saturday, September 29, 2012, 2-4 pm. “100,000 Poets for Change” Reading for Culture Day. Landon Public Library (downstairs), 167 Wortley Rd., London, ON. Our free afternoon reading will be part of an international event which will take place in many cities, in many villages and in the countryside all over the world, at the same time and date. 

The first order of change is for poets to get together to perform, educate and entertain, simultaneously with others around the world, changing how we see our own community and the global community. The host in Toronto who asked me to organize a London reading may be doing some Skype connections with us and other cities, other provinces. Such an event ties in nicely with our national Culture Days happening at the same time. There will be a blog for us on 100,000 Poets for Change. Twenty-three poets are signed up, including Susan McMaster, President of The League of Canadian Poets. Musicians Jennifer White and Robert McMaster as well! Good will? Immeasurable! 

And I am writing a book on Jack Layton’s support of and interest in the arts in Canada. I’m now collecting anecdotes, reminiscences and opinions or observations about Jack and the arts

Jack in the arts (that guitar, that piano, that revised song!) the role of the arts for him. As Jack would remind me, he was a proud member of the Writers’ Union! I’ve just collated all his emails to us and they include some interesting discussions. They’re bitter-sweetly sad to read now, given all we have lost in Jack…but of course we continue in hope. I’ll also be interviewing folks for my radio show, Gathering Voices. 

Olivia Chow endorses the work: “I heartily encourage folks to send Penn your stories of Jack’s relationship with and his support of the arts. This project is a great opportunity to share our stories about how Jack and the NDP celebrated our Canadian cultures and what we must do together to continue this relationship. You know he loved to make music and we loved to dance!”

When Jack Layton died last August, he was given a state funeral. Roy Thompson Hall was packed; the lineup of artists celebrating Jack stellar and the street theatre outside was sublime. I would like to commemorate Jack’s birthday in July and the first anniversary of his death with two e-shorts on Amazon.ca. I believe such pieces would be timely and widely read, given the nation’s outpouring of love and sympathy. Jack Layton’s support of and interest in the arts in Canada underlay his politics. In his long municipal and federal political life, he always included and encouraged artists to become activists. My working title is Jack Layton: Art for Action!

On Saturday, August 4, I’m participating in The Summer Soirée Festival of the Arts, Aeolian Performance Hall, London, Ontario.  Afternoon workshop Gary Diggins, Jocelyn Drainie and me on The Healing Nature of Sound and then an evening performance, Sonica Hypnotica.  Chris Meloche and I will kick off the evening event with new work in progress from The Electric Folklore Machine.

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PENN KEMP’S MOST RECENT BOOK
Helwa!, PigeonBike Press, 2011

Description
PigeonBike Press has launched Penn Kemp’s chapbook of Helwa!  alongside the release by Pendas Production of Penn Kemp’s CD, Night Vision, which includes Helwa!.

Since her first book was published by Coach House Press in 1972, she has been pushing textual and aural boundaries, often in participatory performance work. Many of her recent CDs are what Penn terms “Sound Operas”: poetic narratives that weave sound, imagery and music in the counterpoint of many voices. Working across a variety of cultural practices to engage her audience, she hosts an eclectic literary show, Gathering Voices, archived on CHRWradio.com/talk/gatheringvoices. Having performed in festivals around the world, most recently in Britain, Brazil and India, Penn lives in London Canada, where she edits poetry for Pendas Productions, a small poetry publisher she and husband Gavin Stairs run. Penn has been heralded by the Writers’ Union as a “one woman literary industry”. 

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BETWEEN BETWEEN

Between Between is a short film that concerns the process of mourning, translating some of Penn Kemp’s performance poetry into visual imagery for a compelling, evocative portrayal of that state. Between Between examines the experience both of the mourner and (perhaps) of the newly dead. A Penn Kemp and Dennis Siren collaboration.

 

Penn Kemp, Interview and Poems, April 2014

 Penn Kemp, Interview and Poems for National Poetry Month, April 2014

 

Thanks to Stan Burfield who interviewed me: see

 

http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/season-2-interviews–poems-only-from-dec-4th-2013/1.

 

Penn Kemp is one of two featured poets at London Open Mic Poetry Night`s special April 16th event in celebration of National Poetry Month. The reading was at the Landon Branch Library in Wortley Village. 

Penn Kemp will be launching her latest collection, from Dream Sequins,  at the reading.  A batch of her poems from the chapbook follow the interview below.

Penn Kemp, a native of Strathroy and raised in London, has been heralded by The Writers’ Union as “a one-woman literary industry”. A poet, activist, performer, playwright and editor, Kemp was UWO`s writer-in-residence in 2009-10 and the Inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of London in 2010-12. She received the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Award for contributions to Canadian arts and culture. 

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Penn Kemp has published 26 books of poetry and drama, and has had six plays and ten CDs of “sound opera” produced. Most recently, her play The Dream Life of Teresa Harris was produced at Eldon House. Her latest publication is the 2013 anthology, Jack Layton: Art in Action. She currently edits poetry for Pendas Productions and hosts her Lit-on-Air program, “Gathering Voices”.  Penn lives with her partner Gavin Stairs in London. 

SB:  When and how and why did you get started writing poetry?

PK:    I started writing when I was six, recognizing the power of the written word as a step to independence: I could write down my own stories and poems, without having to wait on a parent’s availability to read them aloud.  “I will do it myself,” said the Little Red Hen.  “And she did.”

My grandmothers were grand sources of inspiration.  My Strathroy grandmother knew many poems by heart (that delicious phrase!) which she would recite to me in a kind of incantatory lilt.  My Irish grandmother told me wild tales of legends that sparked my imagination into new realms, revealed through the power of stories.

Having just come from Dr. Ross Woodman’s funeral, I’m thinking of all the dimensions of possible expression and articulation that his shamanic presentation inspired.  Ross was a professor of Romantics, whose Honours course I took in 1963.  He opened my eye and ear to the kind of oracular poetry that was akin to prophecy, the kind that sprang directly from the Aeolian harp or the Delphic spring.  Who would not want to become a poet in the tradition of Blake, Keats and Coleridge?  

I’d always known that words were magic: they called me.  So I attempted to recreate that wonder in my own work. Western’s poetry magazine, Folio, published my first poems (after juvenilia in The Masonville Gazette andMedway Magnet!) in 1963.  As Blake was Ross Woodman’s Muse, so the magical resonance of the spoken poem became mine. 

SB:    You began your career by earning an Honours degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Western Ontario (1966) and then a high school teacher’s certificate, and later completed your M.Ed. You taught English for three years and, since then, have performed your poetry and plays in schools and have given many class workshops for students and teachers. Were you originally thinking of being a teacher for the rest of your working life, or did you always want to do poetry full-time somehow? You have combined the two quite often, in teaching poetry and teaching creativity.

PK:  I had always wanted to write full time, but in the mid-Sixties, that seemed impossible.  I taught full-time till 1970, with 1967-8 spent exploring Europe and North Africa.  Inadvertently, I hit every revolution going, including Paris, London, Prague.  It was quite an education and I was politicized.  Since then, I’ve been an activist… and supported myself through writing and/or occasional teaching of writing… along with happily lowering my standard of living in order to have time to write!

SB:    You have had a lifelong fascination with ancient and world mythologies, resulting in extensive world travels.  How has this affected your own world view, your spiritual life, and finally your poetry and other writings? 

PK:  Many of my books have been based on travels:  Travelling Light, Changing Place and Clearing, for example, and most recently, Helwa!, a long poem describing an overnight visitation between the walls of the Sphinx. Several of my books have been dedicated to goddesses of creativity, poetry and wisdom from different traditions: for example, Celtic Brighid, who was both an Irish abbess and an ancient goddess; the powerful Egyptian cat-headed Sekhmet; and the Hindu/Buddhist deity of compassion, Tara.  They have all been what I call Inspiritrices in integrating all aspects of living.

SB:    You have offered retreats and workshops on Sarasvati, the Hindu goddess of creativity and have long been a student and teacher of “Spirit”. Please tell us something about this. 

PK:  Sarasvati is both the Hindu and Buddhist deity of wisdom and writing and music.  You can find her statue or image as you enter any school in India.  She is my primary Inspiratrice.  I draw on her energy to create, and the retreat writing workshops I give offer participants an experience of that creative force. For me, “Spirit” needs to be embodied and ensouled: the vehicle for me is voice.

SB:    You refer to your poetry now as “sound opera” instead of “sound poetry”. What do you mean by “sound opera”, and how do you differentiate it from “sound poetry”?

PK:  A sound poem is for me performed by a single voice, even though Canada fostered marvellous sound poetry groups.  I’ve enjoyed pushing textual and aural boundaries, often in participatory performance work, working across a variety of poetic practices to engage the audience.  Since I often work in collaboration with musicians, theatre folks, videographers and other multimedia/ visual artists, I looked for a term that was less focussed on a specific literary tradition, even one like Dada.  So the sound poem naturally developed into “Sound Operas”: poetic narratives that weave sound, imagery and music in a contemporary counterpoint of many voices and different forms. My writing life is divided between poetry and theatre: Sound Opera jumps that gap and allows for both.  Seven of my Sound Operas have been performed at London’s glorious Aeolian Hall.  Poetry in performance is the way I spread the word for the arts and inspire action to support them!  It’s a great joy to collaborate with artists from different media: they expand my sense of possibility.

SB:    What have been the biggest influences on your poetry over your life?

PK: — –World mythology and travel, as you mention, which fed a fascination with language formation as well as other languages.  — Thanks to an eye-opening, ear-opening early association with Coach House Press in the early Seventies, my first works were published.  — Other writers.  In organizing reading series at A Space in Toronto (1973-75) and later in BC and Ontario, I met the poets and writers I admired and happily I’ve stayed in touch with many through the decades.  – Illness gave me time to reflect deeply, and themes on which to reflect.

Feminism has been a huge influence.  In 1973, I edited the first anthology of women’s poetry in Canada, IS 14.  My first play, Angel Makers, was the earliest play produced in Canada to discuss the issues of abortion and choice. I coined the term Siolence for a Feminist Caucus anthology for the League of Poets.  My Master’s courses at O.I.S.E focussed on French feminist texts and a history of feminism. 

SB:    Has your family life had an effect on your poetry?

PK:    My early books were all about my children, as I raised them as a single mother.  My first book, Bearing Down (Coach House Press), was a long sound poem, perhaps the first poetic description of labour!  In Some Talk Magic (Ergo Productions), my babies’ exploration and entrance into language entranced me.  I was fascinated by their babble.  Binding Twine dealt with domestic violence, separation, divorce and custody in the only way I could, through poetry.  I’m presently writing about growing up in London.

SB:    Can you say something about your return to live in London?  

PK:     London has welcomed me home as if I hadn’t left, even though after graduating from Western in 1966, I went off to teach English in Timmins, and except for six months in 1981, I didn’t return until 2001.  Since moving back to London, I’ve dedicated myself to promoting the arts in my home town.  It was a delight to return to Western as Writer-in-Residence.  As London’s first Poet Laureate, I was proud to act as ambassador for local arts and artists. My Lit.-on-Air radio show, Gathering Voices, plays on Radio Western alternating Tuesdays 6:30 am/pm:  http://chrwradio.ca/content/upcoming-episodes-gathering-voices. 

Pendas Productions, the publishing company I run with my husband, Gavin Stairs, has been dedicated to producing hand-bound book and CD combinations to further the sense of community that such collaboration involves. Poets with Panache! See/ hear more on http://mytown.ca/twelfth/ and my monthly updates on www.mytown.ca/pennletters.

SB:    What can we expect from you in the future?

PK:    I’ll be doing some writing workshops for Youth Arts Week and several Festivals this May.  At present, thanks to a Theatre Creators Reserve Grant from The Grand Theatre, I am writing a play about my father, the London painter Jim Kemp, and the arts community in mid-century London as I was growing up here.  AlvegoRoot Theatre is producing it in 2015.   Videographer Dennis Siren has done a videopoem with me that will loop during my father’s exhibition at The Arts Project for the London Visual Fringe, June 3-14.

Upcoming events for May and ongoing are posted on Penn Kemp`s website and on the London Open Mic Upcoming Events page. 

Five Poems by Penn Kemp

They are all in From Dream Sequins, a handbound chapbook which will be launched April 16 at London Open mic Poetry Night.  Art by Steven McCabe.  Lyrical Myrical Press, Toronto, December 2012.  Second printing, 2013.

Naturalized, the Dream Spreads into my Back Yard  

It is raining.  I have fallen asleep listening 
to downpour on a greenhouse vinyl roof. 

I have fallen asleep listening to laments 
by Natalie Goldberg.  Nat, she calls herself 

when chiding or coaching or encouraging 
more writing.  The gnats have emerged 

from hibernation or larvae to buzz about 
my face, agitated by the upcoming storm, 

or are these midges?  Fungus gnats all 
winter have harboured among my too 

well watered plants, breeding, eating 
the sweet succulence and now emerging. 

Lightning flickers and the computer growls,  
but it will go on backup if struck, 

I hope.  Thunder roars back, shaking 
the window frame, but still far distant. 

The pressure before a storm weighs down 

upon my head, flattening the scalp, wedging 
premonition into my febrile brain. 

The storm itself will not shake free.  It is not just  
the drama of stirring boughs and pelting rain. For 

Natalie’s voice, as I sleep, advises writers to rein in  
their wild mind, even though it might rear and buck.   

Through the storm, I listened to her Thunder and Lightning  
tape.  Now in morning sun, I’ll plant snapdragons, zinnias.   

Sunflowers preside over the garden with stately crimson nods.  
Dimensions cross over like water colours bleeding but not muddy,  
merging separate realities.  A commonality of cloud connective 
tissue.  Striating web strands between blue spheres. Here. 

©Penn Kemp

In Light   
  
Let the light in, please.  Open 
the blinds to see that shadow  
lies where light does not fall. 
Where there is no shadow, 
there can be no fear.  Where 
there is no fear, all is light.  
       Let light penetrate all 
our permeable membrane 
of skin.  Let it illuminate 
dark corridors of blood 
and vein.  Let light fill 
our whole body till cells  
dance like dust motes. 
      Let the sun beam light 
through our pores till 
we glow luminous and 
radiant, incandescent, 
as the day’s eye. 
       Let us eat light like 
plants.  Let us chew 
the bright air till we can  
swallow light like 
fire-eaters.  Let us 
assimilate light till 
we are light, just that 
bearable lightness  
of being 
just.  
 
©Penn Kemp

 
Sounding The Aeolian 

We’re in the green room rehearsing Dream Sequins at Aeolian Hall,  
papers scattered about, but the piece is coming together magically 
when Clark comes through, inviting me upstairs for a casual snack.   
 
As I follow him into the hall, sunlight streams into the hall, lighting  
the Black Madonnas into radiant Life.  The shutters are thrown open. 
 
The entire hall is alive with refracted light that sparkles crystalline in  
a vibrating web of energy.  Clark agrees that the hall is sacred space,  
 
resonant with possibility.  It’s a nexus, a new Jerusalem.  As Clark opens  
a small door on our left to his apartment, a gorgeous, gigantic Monarch  
 
butterfly with a fluid swallow tail attracts my attention.  One leg is caught 
in the rafter by a dense cobweb.  Turning to the tall blonde woman who  
 
suddenly appears on my left, I ask if she can cut it free.  She flashes  
a curved knife, long enough to loosen the webbing, though some guck  
 
is still stuck to its leg.  I hold out my index finger and the butterfly alights.  
It’s attracted, I laugh, to the residue of jam I’ve just been eating.   
 
The butterfly rides with me up the narrow but sunlit spiral staircase.  
The buttery wood is beautifully carved in warm maple, a shell’s whorl, 
leading us up.  A shell to sound.  A breeze to blow throughout the Hall.  

©Penn Kemp

Stirring Not Stirring 

Honey drips from my nose, coats  
my hair in blond stiff strands. 

I am standing very still calling 
bees by scent.  Pheromones draw  

them to collect on me, hiving off 
to a giant new temporary queen, 

spun down from my chin in a grand 
pharaoh’s beard.  My eyes, my ears  

are bee-shut, open only to their buzz. 
                      
What I didn’t know is that I’m here 
in front of a bear’s cave on the first  
warm day of summer, attending 

emergence, as the swarm births 
from entrails of bull and bear. 

Bee goddess, bear goddess, mid- 
wife, be with us mid-life and beyond.   

©Penn Kemp

Homing to the Given 

I am moving into old time 
Fire embraces my shadow, 
absorbs darkness into heat. 
 
Friends linger, huddle under 
our circular warmth.  10,000 
years melt away in the current 
 
climate shift.  There goes snow. 
Too late for comfort, too late to 
reverse trends toward entropy. 

Decades, centuries speed past 
future possibles into the past as 
currencies of passable presents. 
 
How to turn this tendency around.   
Rapidly, rapidly.  Restraint is not  
enough.  Constraint does not serve. 
 
That’s not the story.  I’m drifting. 
The ceremony commenced while 
attention was off in is own helium. 
 
I am standing before the entrance 
of deep cave, a cave I recognize 
only by the dark its shadow casts. 
 
Fire gleams.  Fire climbs the walls. 
Shapes dance into consistent form. 
The sense of bear emerges into three 
 
dimensions.  Someone from behind  
must be holding up the bearskin for 
Orsel, Artemis, Bear Woman, shape 
 
shifter.  There is no one there but 
this bear shape is now my contour. 
Bear shape becomes me.  Becomes 
 
my own, new comfort large enough  
to roam back, large enough to call home.  

©Penn Kemp

All poems are from the handbound chapbook, From Dream Sequins, which was launched in London April 16 at London Open Mic Poetry Night.  Art by Steven McCabe.  Lyrical Myrical Press, Toronto, December 2012.  Second printing, 2013.

Penn Kemp’s poems illustrate the challenge of living in a setting which overwhelms the dream world with strange stimuli.  Steven McCabe’s matching ink drawings depict a cathartic process of reimagining the poems in intricate imagery.  

“I love to enter the dream flow of these evocative poems & drawings as they converse. Scintillating and flowing, they draw you simultaneously outside to the big order of things & inside to the mind, heart, & deep tissues of the body, celebrating the primacy of vital speech & visual image.” 
Susan McCaslin 

Gathering Voices on Radio Western

 

Gathering Voices, 94.9 FM, Radio Western, Upcoming Episodes

Gathering Voices, Penn’s lit.-on-air radio show is heard on alternate Tuesdays at 6:30 AM and PM on CHRW, Radio Western, 94.9 FM and online. For upcoming programs and archived shows, see: http://chrwradio.ca/content/upcoming-episodes-gathering-voices.

Listen live on www.chrwradio.com/listen.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm.  (R. July 22, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am). Featuring Tanya Evanson’s evanescent CD, Language for Gods, available from Mother Tongue Media. Tanya is an Antiguan-Québécoise interartist poet, performer and director of both Mother Tongue Media and The Banff Centre Spoken Word Program.She has published chapbooks and studio albums of spoken wor.l.d music. A classical semazen or Sufi Whirling Dervish since 2002, she has performed and taught extensively. She parts not one truth from another. See www.mothertonguemedia.com.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm.  (R. August 5, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am). Gathering Voices features The Electric Folk Lore Machine by Chris Meloche with Penn Kemp (text) and Richard Moule premiered August 4, 2012, Aeolian Hall Summer Festival, London. Sound artists Gary Diggins, Jocelyn Drainie and Penn performed Sonica Hypnotica. On the show as well is “For Peace” from Gary’s CD, A Blue Tear. Listen

Tuesday, August 12, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm. (R. August 19, 6:30-7:00 am). Featuring Saskatchewan poet Mari-Lou Rowley’s CD, Cellular Logic. Sound by Roderick Schoolbraid: a Revelations Production. Eco-science poet and interdisciplinary adventurer Mari-Lou Rowleyhas encountered a timber wolf, found over 44 four-leaf clovers, and published nine collections of poetry, most recently Unus Mundus (Anvil). Penn reads several poems from Unus Mundus.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm. (R. September 2, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am). Featuring Cat Kidd’s Hyena Subpoena Part 1. A formative figure in the Montreal poetry scene since the early 90s, Catherine Kidd is the author of the novel Missing the Ark, the poetry collection Bipolar bear and critically-acclaimed solo show Sea Peach. Her most recent poem series, Hyena Subpoena, was presented as a solo show in 2011, and released as CD/book, May 2014; see catkidd.com/. We’ll hear several of these poems with soundscapes now.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm. (R. September 16, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am).  Gathering Voices celebrates 2014’s 100,000 Poets for Change event on September 27 world-wide, http://100tpc.org/. Part 1 features a poetry reading celebrating the theme of change that took place on September 29, 2013, at Landon Library. This afternoon celebrated Culture Days across Canada as well. http://chrwradio.ca/content/gathering-voices-100000-poets-change-parts-1-2

Tuesday, September 23, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm. (R. September 30, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am).  The show celebrates 2014’s 100,000 Poets for Change event on September 27 world-wide, http://100tpc.org/. Part 2 features a poetry reading celebrating the theme of change that took place on September 29, 20013, at Landon Library. This afternoon celebrated Culture Days across Canada as well. http://chrwradio.ca/content/gathering-voices-100000-poets-change-parts-1-2.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm. (R. October 14, 6:30-7:00 am). Gathering Voices features the divine Brenda McMorrow in her latest CD, Igniting the Beauty, White Swan Records. With a deep devotion to the unveiling and celebration of our true beings through the power of sound, this beautiful former Londoner travels worldwide to share her unique blend of original folk-inspired melodies, world beats and sacred Indian devotional chants. Brenda sang and composed the music to Penn’s poem that opens each Gathering Voices show. Hear more on http://www.brendamcmorrow.com.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm. (R. October 28, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am). The show features circle of she by Moe Clark. Moe received mentorship from Sheri-D Wilson, who helped launch her career as a spoken word artist at the 2005 Calgary International Spoken Word Festival. Moe has toured across Canada and internationally. See http://moeclark.ca/

Tuesday, November 4, 2014, 6:30 – 7:00 pm.  (R. November 11, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am). Helwa! a Sound Opera Experiencing Ancient Egypt , Part 1 by Penn Kemp with The Helwa Ensemble: musicians Mary Ashton and Panayiotis Giannarapis, sound artist Jocelyn Drainie, Egyptologist/poet Daniel Kolos and belly dancer Ishra Blanco. Together we trace the soul’s journey across the nocturnal sky to rebirth the next day: a classical Egyptian journey that the star goddess Nut took nightly.  Recorded live at Aeolian Hall (August 2011) and mastered by John Magyar. Helwa! a Sound Opera Experiencing Ancient Egypt (cd) will be available from Pendas Productions, pendas@pennkemp.ca.  It is dedicated to the people of Egypt. Listen.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 6:30-7:00 pm. (R. November 25, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am). Helwa! a Sound Opera Experiencing Ancient Egypt , Part 2 by Penn Kemp with The Helwa Ensemble: musicians Mary Ashton and Panayiotis Giannarapis, sound artist Jocelyn Drainie, Egyptologist/poet Daniel Kolos and belly dancer Ishra Blanco. Together we trace the soul’s journey across the nocturnal sky to rebirth the next day: a classical Egyptian journey that the star goddess Nut took nightly.   Recorded live at Aeolian Hall (August 2011) and mastered by John Magyar.  Helwa! a Sound Opera Experiencing Ancient Egypt (cd) will be available from Pendas Productions, pendas@pennkemp.ca.  It is dedicated to the people of Egypt. Listen http://chrwradio.com/talk/gatheringvoices/20120216GatheringVoices.mp3)

Tuesday, December 2, 2014, 6:30-7:00 pm (R. December 9, 2014, 6:30-7:00 am). Featuring Trieze, a CD by Vivian Houle, BC sound artist. As vocalist and improviser, Vivian deconstructs words into sounds on remarkable journeys that include jazz vocals as well. With Peggy Lee (cello), Lisa Miller (piano), Chris Gestrin (analog keyboards) and Jesse Zubot (violin).

Tuesday, December 16, 2014 (R. December 23, 2014 6:30-7:00 am). Featuring Cat Kidd’s Hyena Subpoena, Part 2. A formative figure in the Montreal poetry scene since the early 90s, Catherine Kidd is the author of the novel Missing the Ark, the poetry collection Bipolar bear and a critically acclaimed solo show, Sea Peach. Her most recent poem series, Hyena Subpoena, was presented in 2011, and released as CD/book in May 2014; see catkidd.com/. We’ll hear several of these poems with soundscapes now.

 

Presses with Open Readings for Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts

The Line Break

In the past, I have created such lists as all the Small, Independent, and University Press Poetry Book Publishers (which was up-to-date as of 3-6-10 with 687 presses) and all the Journals with “Review” in Their Title, Who Accept Poetry, and Who Have a Website (which was up-to-date as of 2-29-12 with 344 journals.) The first lists I made were Poetry Book Contests with Spring & Summer Deadlines, Poetry Book Contests with Fall & Winter Deadlines (scroll down), and Poetry Chapbook Contests (scroll down).

Now, it’s time to start a new list, and I’ll keep it here and I’ll update it as I can. Currently, these are the only ones I remember or that other kind people have reminded me of. The list will grow, and if you know of any open readings, please note them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list…

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All Aboard! Hop on the My Writing Process – Blog Tour

Kites Without Strings

Writing transports you to places you’ve never seen before. Here’s an inexpensive adventure anyone can take without leaving home.

Cobalt, Ontario, home of the Spring Pulse Poetry Festival. Watch for a future blog on this topic.

This is how it works. You start here, spend some time on my blog and then you may travel backwards to the Monday, June 30 blog of my writing colleague Marianne Jones. She’s invited several writers to chat about their writing processes and has also provided recommended links for additional blog hopping.

Then next Monday, July 14 you can travel forward and visit the blog sites of three more of my writing friends. Scroll down for my recommendations but before you do, below are the four questions that Marianne asked me about my writing process, followed by my answers:

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON?

Professionally, I am working on three main projects:

1)…

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