Poem: The Challenger & The Challenge

News That Stays News: Thirty Years Ago Today

 

Flight controllers are looking very closely

at the situation.                                   January 28, 1986

Obviously a major malfunction.            Bag lady dies in dank stairwell.

We have no downlink.…                             She had no relations.

We will never forget them.                       She was a very angry person.

They prepared for their journey

waved goodbye       and slipped          But I don’t think we will ever

the surly bonds of earth                      know or understand

to touch     the face of God.                 the real     Ann Regan.

Quotes Ronald Reagan.

 

Penn Kemp

 

 

Cat a Gory by Penn Kemp

My very strange tale is up today, featuring pumas, Ronald Wright and Ira Glass among family members and lions!  From ongoing DREAM SEQUINS, of course.
Catch the visual of tiger cubs on https://jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/cat-a-gory-by-penn-kemp/ …

Thanks, ed. Christopher James!

Jellyfish Review

Cat a Gory

November-27-15: I come upon mom and dad in the living room of my childhood home, sharing something private. Dad’s chest is bare, revealing two huge breasts. I don’t know how to respond, so I joke: “Lucky you. Now you have your own breasts to play with.” Neither parent replies.

My baby sister is just a few months old, but she is precocious. “Hi, Jenny,” she greets me in a high treble. When I correct her, she points to herself and says another coherent phrase. She has been lying alone in her bassinet all night, so she must be wet, cold and hungry. I bring her in to mom, who’s lying in her bedroom, sleeping off labour by herself. The poor baby seems to dissolve into a puddle in the bed, with swirls of scarlet in a viscous liquid.

Though it’s night, I lead mom by the hand to the swamp outside our door. We traipse through…

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Celebrating Brighid

Celebrating Imbolc in Brighid‘s three day festival at the end of January!
This year, it’s a time of quiet incubation, retreat, reflection.
But here’s my interview of celebrations past at The Circle:
http://news.chrwradio.com/2011/02/gathering-voices-mary-condren.html

and an invitation for Jan. 31, 7 pm :https://www.facebook.com/events/549510778558508/ “An Inclusive, Participatory & Accessible Ritual of Transformation & Celebration of Brighid in the Time of Imbolc. Free Will Offering. Fragrance Free Event. Everyone Welcome.” Unitarian Fellowship of London 557 Clarke Road, London, Ontario N5V 2E1

Painting by my father, James Kemp

Brighid, the ancient Celtic goddess of Poetry, Healing, Smithcraft… and transformation:

Moth by Jim Kemp

 

From http://www.danfurst.com/prelude—january-2016.html  Jan. 23, Saturday:

First day of the Goddess month of Bridhe, sacred to the Celtic and Britannic Goddess variously called Brigit, Bridhe, Brigantia and later, St. Bridget. As shown here, she is also called the Triple Brighids, and is one of the most widely-revered manifestations of the Triple Goddess. She is the protector of the eternal creative flame that maintains the vitality of the natural world, and is the patron of warriors and of all practitioners of feminine arts and crafts, most notably the occult disciplines of divination, witchcraft, herb and star lore, and prophecy. She is also represented by the spirals that appear constantly in Celtic art. Her totemic animals are the ram and the ox, her sacred plant the blackberry.

P.K. Page, remembered

Celebrating P.K. Page, who died at 93 on January 14, 2010, in Victoria, B.C.

Elegant and gracious in her work and her life…

P.K. Page came to visit us on Ward’s Island, Toronto in the fall of 1973. I’d arranged for her to come and read then in the poetry series I was organizing at A Space. The weather was blustery so we had the oil stove puffing and popping away in the middle of our living room. You have to imagine the elderly Island cottage, without much insulation, and with two small children crawling underfoot. P.K. was dressed to the nines in a glamorous cape and armloads of silver jewellery. But at the stove’s first growl, she leapt up and alighted for the evening on the couch arm closest to the door. She’d had an oil stove explode on her before and she was taking no chances! But she made that perch hers, crossing her legs elegantly, and gallantly discussed poetry and poets until the last boat swept her away to the city.

A Tribute to P. K. Page was posted on The Malahat Review, web.uvic.ca/malahat/.

 

Poem for Winter

From an Upstairs Window, Winter filmed by Dennis Siren at The Aeolian Hall, London ON, with Anne Anglin, Penn Kemp, and Brenda McMorrow.

 

All Things Considered

Pale sun on snow pulls me from a poem
to the window, lights a shaft of spinning
possibility. Now at nadir of deepest darkness

the small Moon of Long Night turns to beam
over the orchard above the frozen lake.

The sun stands Solstice still, holding
its breath, biding its time until released
to start once more in utter clarity of cold.

In that perilous moment before cycles
start up again, we all can fall through
cracks.  Interstices of ice drag us down.

We slip between stars, drawn out
beyond what we know, considering,

considere, to be with the luminary
in the void we have too long avoided.

We fall, we fail to grasp the star we
hang on, the metaphor we reach for.

We grope from dusk to dark to light
that is meant to trick, to lead us astray
en las estrellas, through this vast space.

We sleep warily, drifting far, unsecured
by orchard, by lake, by familiar bed.

Hold on!  But there is nothing to hold fast.

Penn Kemp

 

 

Poem for a Sweet ’16’

 January 1, 2016

Happy to celebrate Sweet ’16’ with a poem here!

“An Ounce of Essential”, http://www.byandbylit.org/penn-kemp/
By&By Poetry. January 1, 2016: http://www.byandbylit.org/issue-two/.

An Ounce of Essential

 

My sweet oils implode upon his sinus as cough.
Red-rimmed eyes implore me to come clean.
Stripped of perfume, I’m a layer naked, still
aggrieved to lose those ancient pleasures I
was so accustomed to wrap myself around.

What’s noxious to one is humdrum to another’s
sense. Out at the service station, I hide my
throbbing head in scarves, breathing in old
scents while, undeterred by oil or gas spill,
to fill our tank, he braves car, truck or diesel.

Their fumes set me fuming: rendered direct to
my temples as dark clouds over the autobahn.
I’m off and roaring before the car is. Exhausted

by exhaust, what was my nervous system crawls
to its last redoubt and screeches, shrivels like a
cockroach sprayed by Raid. The map of my brain must
be all nose, homunculus sniffing out new terrain for
sachets of fonder memories in the glove compartment.

Flowers, I gasp. Give me instead whole acres of bright
pollen pounded to mere ounces of essential oil.
“So,” he announces, hopping back into the driver’s seat.
“We’re all gassed up. Ready for a day in the country?”

Our coniunctio oppositorum is the margin of air where
Pollution Gage meets Pollen Count. “I am if you are.”
In partnerships these days, sensitive is sensitized.

PK

“It’s a pleasure to read such well-crafted poetry—I anticipate that our burgeoning readership will enjoy it immensely. Thank you.”
Jason Sears, editor.

BIO

London, ON poet, activist and playwright Penn Kemp (M.Ed.) is London’s inaugural Poet Laureate. Penn is the League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word artist of the year and their 40th Life Member. Her most recent work is From Dream Sequins, Lyrical Myrical Press, Toronto, and Jack Layton Art in Action, which she edited for Quattro Books, Toronto. A prolific artist, Penn has to date published over twenty-five books and had six plays produced. She is one of Canada’s most active performance poets, with ten CD’s to her credit, many videopoems and Canada’s first poetry CD-ROM.