On the Road for National Poetry Month!

Upcoming Events for National Poetry Month 2016 and ON

Saturday, April 16, 2-4 p.m. The Garafraxa Café, 131 Garafraxa Street South (Highway 6), Durham ON N0G 1R0. National Poetry Month reading: “The Road” with Daniel Kolos and Liz Zetlin. See http://poets.ca/npm/. Contact: danielkolos123@gmail.com or Michelle and Kevin Bosse, 519-369-2175, garafraxacafe@gmail.com.  See http://poets.ca/npm/.

Thursday, April 21. Post a poem on #pocketpoem, poets.ca/pocketpoem

Thursday, April 28, 6:30-8:30 pm. WRITING YOUR WAY!. Writing workshop and reading.  Beacock Library, 1280 Huron St, London, Ontario N5Y 4M2, (519) 451-8140.  2016 Creative Age Festival. National Poetry Month. Penn’s reading/workshop will be “The Road, The Path, The Way Not Taken: Writing What If”. “You inspired so many writers last year that we would love to have you back again for the 2016 Creative Age Festival. Your Poetry is bound to inspire as always.” Contact: Pauline Duncan-Thrasher, Community-Library Liaison, pauline@beamazinglyyou.com. Free but you need to register:
https://encore.londonpubliclibrary.ca/iii/encore/record/C__Rg1005885__Screative%20age__P0,3__Orightresult__X6?lang=eng&suite=beta

Saturday, April 30. Authors for Indies Day, Oxford Book Shop, 262 Piccadilly Street, London, N6A 1S4. Contact: Hilary bookorderprocessing@oxfordbookshop.com. Tel: 519-438-8336.  www.oxfordbookshop.com, http://www.authorsforindies.com/.

Tuesday, May 3. Glendale High School, 37 Glendale Drive. Tillsonburg, ON N4G 1J6. TEL: 519-842-4207.  Contact: John Marriott <j.marriott@tvdsb.on.ca>. Sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets. Poets in the Schools National Youth Arts Week.

Thursday, May 5, 6:30-8:30 pm. WRITING YOUR WAY!. Writing workshop and reading.   Beacock Library, 1280 Huron St, London, Ontario N5Y 4M2, (519) 451-8140.  2016 Creative Age Festival. http://poets.ca/npm/. Penn’s reading/workshop will be “The Road, The Path, The Way Not Taken: Writing What If”. Contact: Pauline Duncan-Thrasher, Community-Library Liaison, pauline@beamazinglyyou.com. Free but you need to register:

Friday, May 6. Lester B. Pearson School for the Arts, 795 Trafalgar St, London, ON N5Z 1E6, (519) 452-8300. Sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets, National Youth Arts Week. Contact: Jennifer Chesnut, <feministsoulfire@gmail.com>.

Tuesday, May 24, 7 – 8:30 pm. Opening The Creative Aging Festival Showcase concert. Wolf Hall, 251 Dundas St. London ON. Contact: June Cole, diverse.arts@gmail.com. https://www.facebook.com/CreativeAgeLondon/photos/a.181607875346967.1073741828.181474082027013/545731032267981/?type=3&theater

Friday, June 17, 7:45-9 am. The anthology, Women & Multimedia, edited by Penn Kemp, will be launched at the breakfast business meeting of the Feminist Caucus of the League of Canadian Poets. Contributors Di Brandt, Terry Carter, Penn Kemp, Moe Clark, Jude Neale, and Cathy Petch will present our work then. The 2016 Canadian Writers’ Summit, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto ON, 235 Queens Quay W, Toronto, ON M5J 2G8. http://poets.ca/feministcaucus/, http://www.canadianwriterssummit.com/english#/program/

Saturday, June 18, 4-5:30pm, 2016. Panel, “Women & Performance: Playwrights and Performance Poets”, with panelists from both Playwrights Guild Women’s Caucus and League Feminist Caucus members. Penn is panel coordinator and editor of the anthology to be launched at the same time. Sponsored by Playwrights Guild of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets. The 2016 Canadian Writers’ Summit, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay W, Toronto, ON M5J 2G8, http://poets.ca/feministcaucus/, canadianwriterssummit.com.

Photo: Westminster Secondary School, London

March 12- August 21, 2016. Jim Kemp’s painting, “Three Figures with Tall Hats” is on exhibit in “Portals”. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. 101 Queen St N, Kitchener ON N2H 6P7. Curator: Edwin Outwater, Music Director. Contact: Ass’t Curator. 519-579-5860 x 230.
http://kwag.ca/en/connections/resources/kwag_newsletter_jan_apr_2016_web.pdf, p. 6

 

 

A study in red hair, poem by Penn Kemp (MY MANE MEMORIES Poetry and Prose Series)

Silver Birch Press

A study in red hair
by Penn Kemp

If it were juice, a light cranberry tinged with grape.
If wine, a sauterne, a bubbling rosé. If essential oil
neroli, the taste of tangerine. If scent, what the wind

carries from May blossoms, hawthorn and lilac, lily
of the valley intermingled, a confusion of delight
ripe and ready to turn from cinnamon to ash-grey.

A vibration beyond ultraviolet, where illusions of
colour shape to rainbow possibles glint between
memories, strawberry blonde aging well to white.

Auburn, chestnut, carrot, scarlet, flame. Hey, Red!

PHOTO: A recent photo of the author.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem describes the colours my own mane has gone through, from infancy. My Grade Seven Teacher, Miss Morgan, told me decades later that she sat me in the window aisle so that the she could enjoy the sun shining on my hair. It was strawberry blond turning…

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A study in red hair, poem by Penn Kemp (MY MANE MEMORIES Poetry and Prose Series)

A study in red hair by Penn Kemp If it were juice, a light cranberry tinged with grape. If wine, a sauterne, a bubbling rosé. If essential oil neroli, the taste of tangerine. If scent, what the win…

Source: A study in red hair, poem by Penn Kemp (MY MANE MEMORIES Poetry and Prose Series)

World Poetry Day

March 21… Monday!  and I’m remembering all our past adventures!

Posting this poem, because it’s vigorously snowing…
See Dennis Siren’s videopoem using part of this text:

Crossing the Light

Our near neighbours, the dead, shimmer beyond the fence line.
Suspended in air, why do they care for our silly antics?
Shouldn’t they be headed toward the light? Are they caught

by our yearning, pulled on the taut line of longing that holds
us to them? Memory, nothing but memories project out, project
beyond those viscous realms we can barely fathom.

Ancestors surround us, bemused. The space between us
looms like nothing, invisible fullness of spirit. Nothing
looms. Just about perfect. Almost right. Taken for granted.

Symmetries of either sphere don’t merge nor mesh.
The life to come is already here when time dissipates.
Mysteries of multiplicity displaced again shift shape.

The abstract dead regard our fears. They watch our coming
and goings-on. With a t/rope they could steer us along ways
less problematic. But then the word isn’t heard without an ear

and memory of mouth to utter. Utter confusion. Utter awe.

Shock sneaks a gap between event and reaction.
Animation suspended. Adrenaline overload. A zone
slowed down to zero and beyond. Cross at the corner

with the light or be accosted by cross border guards.

In and out of time, visitors file by, see-through poem in hand.
Wait for them. Send for them. You might wait a while.
Messages to the missing are seldom reported lost.

The dead collect, fan out with last
leaves’ fall. Not content to lie
mouldering in snow-softened grave

they hover mid air, mid-dimension, mid
dream. Their visiting hours limited to
the wee hours when all is possible

though nothing can be clearly seen.

They speak when spoken to just like
the good children they were raised
to be, but sound won’t carry across

the divide. Their mouths open and
close. Open and close. Great gulfs
of uninterrupted, uninterpreted anguish.

Nobody can lip read over here. Words
land on the sea, rest a second on that flat
flaccid surface and almost dissolve.

Snow falls, flake by flake. The dead descend
in tiny white shrouds, as in that last scene
from Joyce’s short story, John Huston’s film.

They linger alive for another moment of
morning and melt. Left mourning, I scry
between between words and worlds.

Reeled in by whatever realm entices.

Pale sun on snow
pulls me from the poem
to the window, lights

a shaft of reeling
possibility. Ice

crystals split to rainbow
in the glint and dull again
at instant cloud cover.

Indoor plants lean toward
the west, yearn for more.
Or. Less. Then. When.

The thermometer hovers at zero,
that zone where elements merge
confused, uncertain, in-between.

Tears course down the pane.

Beyond outer reaches of thought,
the land is luminous

Penn Kemp

The Parliamentary Poet Laureate Poem of the Week

http://everydaychod.com/poems/CrossingTheLight.shtml

March 12- August 21, 2016. Jim Kemp’s painting, “Three Figures with Tall Hats” is on exhibit in “Portals”. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. 101 Queen St N, Kitchener ON N2H 6P7. Curator: Edwin Outwater, Music Director. Contact: Jennifer Bullock, Ass’t Curator.
http://kwag.ca/en/connections/resources/kwag_newsletter_jan_apr_2016_web.pdf, p. 6

http://www.around-around.com/die-versify/

Poem from Windsor Review: “Telling Tales”