Published Works by Penn Kemp

Publication History

 

BEARING DOWN (1972) poetry.  Coach House Press, 401 Huron St. Toronto ON

TRANCEFORM  (1976) poetry.  Soft Press, Victoria BC. Reprinted 2006, Pendas

THE EPIC OF TOAD AND HERON (1977) play.  Black Moss Press, Windsor ON

Reprinted 1985 by Playwrights Union, Toronto

CLEARING (1977) poetry. B.C. Monthly, Vancouver  BC

CHANGING PLACE (1978) poetry/prose.  Fiddlehead, U.N.B., Fredericton NB

ANGEL MAKERS (1978) play. Playwrights Union, Toronto

TOAD TALES(1981) poetry. White Pine Press 76 Center St. Fredonia NY 14063

CVii: Spiritual Poetry in Canada (1982), ed. Box 3062, Winnipeg R3C 4E5

ANIMUS (1984) poetry.  Caitlin Press. Reprinted, 2005, Pendas Productions, London

BINDING TWINE (1984) poetry. Ragweed Press, Charlottetown PEI

SOME TALK MAGIC (1986) Ergo Productions, Box 4460 London ON N5W 5J2

TRAVELLING LIGHT (1986) poetry. Moonstone Press, London ON

EIDOLONS (1988) poetry. White Pine Press, 76 Center St. Fredonia NY 14063

THROO (1989) poetry.  Moonstone Press, Book. CD, Pendas Productions, London

THE UNIVERSE IS ONE POEM; FOUR POETS TALK POETRY (1990) Simon & Pierre

WHAT WHAT THE EAR HEARS LAST (1994) play. Playwrights Union, Toronto

FOUR WOMEN (1999) poetry. Red Kite Press, Guelph ON

INCREMENTALLY (2000) poetry Pendas Productions, London.  Book and CD combo

TIME LESS TIME (2000) poetry. Pendas Productions

SUITE ANCIENT EGYPT (2001) poetry. Mothertongue Press, BC

VOCAL BRAIDINGS (2001) with Patricia Keeney, poetry. Pendas Productions

WHAT SPRINGS TO MIND (2001), Pendas Productions

Poem for Peace in Many Voices, ed., Vol. 1 & 2 (2002), book and CD

SARASVATI SCAPES (2002) with Angela Hryniuk, Pendas Productions

C’LOUD (2003) poetry, Pendas Productions. Book and CD combo

SARASVATI SCAPES: a sound opera, CD, Pendas Productions

MELISMA, CD (2002) with Angela Hryniuk and Penn Kemp

GATHERING VOICES (2002) with Gloria Mulcahy, Pendas. Book and CD combo

POEMAS ESCOLHIDOS DE PENN KEMP/ Selected Poems (2004) ABECAN, Brazil

PINCELADAS (2005, 2011) with Gloria Mulcahy, Pendas Productions

RE:ANIMATING ANIMUS (2006) Pendas Productions.  Book and CD combo.  London ON

HELWA1 (2011), PigeonBike Press. London ON. CD forthcoming with Light of East Ensemble

FROM DREAM SEQUINS (2012), Lyrical Myrical Press, Toronto ON
THE EPIC OF TOAD AND HERON (2012), reprint. Pendas Productions, London ON
JACK LAYTON: ART IN ACTION (2013), editor, Quattro Books, Toronto

WHAT SPRINGS TO MIND (2016), second edition, forthcoming. Pendas Productions
WOMEN & MEDIA, editor and contributor, Living Archive Series, Feminist Caucus, League of Canadian Poets, http://poets.ca/feministcaucus/. Launched June 17, 2016.
WOMEN & PERFORMANCE, editor and contributor, Living Archive Series. June 18, 2016.

BARBARIC CULTURAL PRACTICE (2016), Quattro Books, Toronto
THE TRIUMPH OF TERESA HARRIS (2017), Playwrights Guild of Canada, Toronto
LOCAL HEROES (2018), Insomniac Press
FOX HAUNTS (2018), Aeolus House

FOX HAUNTS is ready to trot!

FOX HAUNTS isn’t officially out till September, but foxes are sly and appear unexpectedly, those tricksters. Here’s a delicious first review by poet Stanley Fefferman: http://opusonereview.com/?p=4769!

Penn Kemp’s FOX HAUNTS reviewed by Stanley Fefferman

Posted on July 22, 2018 by Stanley Fefferman

Penn Kemp. Fox Haunts. Aeolus House, 2018. 97 pp.

The way suburban garden fences are a line the fox crosses from the countryside to steal our chickens, is like the line fox, since time immemorial, has crossed from the countryside into our myths, into our dreams, into our literature and our language. Shenanigans is derived from the Gaelic word for fox. A skulk of foxes is the collective noun. Jimmie Hendrix sang of his “Foxy Lady.” And here is a stanza from Penn Kemp’s poem to Inari, the Shinto fox-god deity:

Fox girls dance beneath the twisted maple

calling their sister to tranform from mist

as beguiling women with red in their hair.

Fox Haunts, Penn Kemp’s 24th collection, is a meditation in 90 poems on a predator who is our closest neighbour, one who is getting closer all the time as it’s habitat yields to subdivisions. The longest section of Fox Haunts, entitled “Urban Fox,” consists of poems about foxes Kemp might have encountered: her writing can be elegant.

It’s true you walk on toes like cats

like a ballerina of the wildwood.

Kemp empathizes with the drama of the hunt, the inside as well as the outside of it.

 

Fox circles her prey, closing in

on her victim in ever tightening

gyres. Her fixed glare freezes

poor rabbit into terror so pure it

dissolves to acceptance, suspended

acquiescence, adrenalin overload.

Almost like peace. Soft as comfort,

this compliance in the fox’s grasp.

Just a single shriek before the

neck snaps.

At her best, Kemp’s narrative and poetry are transparent. She has variance in her voice: sometimes she addresses her images directly to the fox:” I come upon your prints on/muddy path, neatly, deliberately splayed.” Sometimes, she drops into a journalistic mode and addresses the reader directly in what sounds to me like chopped prose: “Like Canada Geese, Fox may/be adopting city life to avoid/ hunters, the tough slog of/country life. Clever fellow.” Only to follow that with a passage of the most startlingly direct poetry:

 

They look upon the easy prey of pets, soft

and vulnerable bichon frisés left outside

by themselves in the yard, those with no

defense but a petulant, startled bark —

before they are meat, carried off dangling

in the soft jaw of a mother triumphantly keen

on feeding her kits.

 

Kemp is ‘entranced’ with the world of “Wily wiry trickster tales,” and devotes a section to ‘Fox’ references in the writings of Taliesin, Ovid, in the legend of Samson, in other Hebrew Scriptures relating to Solomon and Ezekiel, in Aesop, W.B Yeats and St. Exupéry, Akiro Kurosawa and Alice Munro whose father raised foxes for fur on a farm where he also kept ” Old horses in the barn waiting/their turn to be fed, to be feed.” As for the night sky, Kemp puts fox in the constellation Canis Major and Canis Minor, These bits of Fox arcana bring into close focus the mythical resonance of that beast in the human imagination.

 

After having the pleasure of reading Fox Haunts, and of writing down these few thoughts, I look forward to more hours with the book, looking into the stories behind lines like:

 

Fetch Laelaps, a bitch commanded to catch all

she chases. Let her seize that Teumessian fox!

 

Fox Haunts is one those rare books that can become a companion.

ABOUT PENN KEMP.  She has been dubbed “a one-woman literary industry” as London, Ontario’s inaugural Poet Laureate and Western University’s Writer-in-Residence. Kemp was the League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Artist, 2015. Her website is www.pennkemp.weebly.com

https://www.stanleyfefferman.com/blog/fox-haunts-by-penn-kemp-a-review-by-stanley-fefferman

This poem is in my forthcoming FOX HAUNTS which can now be ordered! https://www.amazon.com/Fox-Haunts-Penn-Kemp/dp/1987872142/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525695775&sr=1-5

I’ll be launching FOX HAUNTS on September 9, 2018, 4-6 pm. Launch, Aeolus House poets: Ariane Blackman, Brian Cameron, Stanley Fefferman, Tom Hamilton, Penn Kemp and Colin Morton. Pressed (waffle house), 750 Gladstone Ave, Ottawa, ON K1R 6X5. (613) 680-9294. Contact: Allan, abriesmaster@outlook.com.

Sunday, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 7-9 pm. Launch, Aeolus House poets: Ariane Blackman, Brian Cameron, Tom Hamilton, Penn Kemp and Sydney White. Supermarket Restaurant, 268 Augusta Ave., Toronto. Contact: Allan, abriesmaster@outlook.com.