Monthly Archives: November 2020

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3 Plays in the Pledge Project

Large cast plays by Canadian women are featured on https://www.pledgeproject.ca/plays/
For more information about my work, visit 
the CWPO Collection.
1. The Epic of Toad and Heron
https://www.pledgeproject.ca/plays/the-epic-of-toad-and-heron/
Synopsis:

This fantasy pageant tells the story of the Toad Prince who marries a real princess, the daughter of the Sun and Moon who ultimately transforms into a heron.

Characters:

The leads are a Toad Prince and a Princess who is transformed into a Heron. Other characters are Toadlets, as many as needed, played by children. Casting is completely open in regards to gender, race, orientation, and disability.

Resources:

Digital script available through the Canadian Play Outlet. $12.00

The Epic of Toad and Heron was first presented on Toronto Island by Pendas Productions as a way of saving Island homes from being bulldozed by the city. The flying Toad became the icon on the Toronto Island flag: a symbol of survival. The first production featured mimes Jay Fisher and Bibi Caspari as well as a cast of Island children. Penn Kemp has performed the play with children in many Ontario schools as well as back on Toronto Island: https://m.openbooktoronto.com/events/green_carpet_gala_3.

 The Epic of Toad and Heron was published for the first production by Black Moss Press. The marvellous illustrations are by Bobbe Besold with photos by Elizabeth Cunningham.

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Synopsis:
The personal dramas of six women in an abortion ward, presenting different responses, and an examination of the role of nurses as the patients confront hospital bureaucracy. Acts: 1. A period piece from the Seventies that is still all too current. Directed by Anne Anglin

2. Angel Makers
https://www.pledgeproject.ca/plays/angel-makers/

Characters:

2 Nurses
6 Patients
1 Grandmother
1 Child

First Produced:

Redlight Theatre, Toronto, 1976. Toronto General Hospital, 1977

Resources:

Digital script available through the Canadian Play Outlet. $12.00

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3. https://www.pledgeproject.ca/plays/the-triumph-oh-teresa-harris/ 

The Triumph of Teresa Harris celebrates the lives of an extraordinary couple, Teresa Harris and St. George Littledale. Why have these intrepid explorers not been heard of outside the annals of Victorian exploration? The couple shunned publicity. Independently wealthy, they didn’t need to raise money for their expeditions. They reported to the Royal Society and directly to the King. This information was not to fall into the hands of foreign powers that were vying for the same territories as Britain. The Littledales preferred to serve the Empire’s glory, not their own. This is their story.

Characters:
  • Annie
  • Chris
  • First Teresa
  • Sarah
  • Mary
  • Tenzin
  • Passing Stranger, Cook
  • First Amelia
  • Helen
  • Eliza
  • Second Teresa
  • Scott
  • John
  • Second Amelia
  • St. George
  • Third Teresa

First Produced:

The Palace Theatre, London ON, 2017.

The Dream Life of Teresa Harris: Eldon House Historical Museum, London ON, 2013.

The Dream Life of Teresa Harris by Penn Kemp

Resources:

Digital copy available through the CPO website.

Notes:

Male Cast: 6
Female Cast: 10
Other Cast: 2
Total Cast: 18
Acts: 2

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Sounds of Trance Formation

“For Penn Kemp, poetry is magic made manifest. While her subjects are varied, and her interests and approaches have evolved over the years, Kemp has always understood the power of spoken word to evoke emotion, shift consciousness, and shape the world. Drawing on a syncretic blend of spiritual philosophy informed by Alchemy, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other wisdom traditions, Kemp’s work is imminent and transcendent, embodied and cerebral. The words on the page produce certain effects, while the voices in the air produce others altogether.”
The Sounds of Trance Formation: An Interview with Penn Kemp”
Nick Beauchesne, Spoken Web Canada. To be podcast in December 2020.

“Refining the Alchemical Ear: Adept Listening Practices and the Poetry of George Bowering, Margaret Atwood, and Penn Kemp”
Nick Beauchesne, https://spokenweb.ca/events/virtual-listening-practice-guided-by-nick-beauchesne/
This workshop is a brief foray toward an “adept” listening practice; that is, to listen to poetry from the perspective of an aspiring adept, a seeker of spiritual and poetic truths. What can we learn about the seeker’s path, and about poetry, from the Masters? What is the relationship between magic, word, and sound? How does the experience change when encountering these verses visually vs. orally? Analog vs. digital? This week, Nick Beauchesne curates three poems selected from the University of Alberta’s SpokenWeb collection. These poems have been digitized from reel-to-reel recordings of poetry readings captured at the U of A in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and delivered by some heavy-hitters of Canadian literature. These readings touch on themes and practices derived from Alchemy, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age philosophy. George Bowering, Margaret Atwood, and Penn Kemp (formerly Penny Chalmers) are the magical Masters from whom we will learn some new “tricks” of the poetic (and magical) trade. Research project with an interest in the study, preservation and creative use of literary and humanities-oriented audio recordings.”

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In Conversation

Jane Munro & Penn Kemp: In Conversation

The recording is now available to all, whether or not you are on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=816107712501675&ref=watch_permalink. 

The Words Festival has been one of London ON’s liveliest cultural events, presented annually since 2014. But this year, “WordsFest.ca 2020 is going online! Our community needs the transformative power of the literary and creative arts now more than ever.” I’ve been fortunate to present work at WordsFest through many incarnations. To my delight, Words’ indefatigable AD, Joshua Lambier paired me this year with BC poet Jane Munro for a Zoom on November 15: http://wordsfest.ca/events/2020/jane-munro-penn-kemp-in-conversation: “The Words Festival is very pleased to present two of Canada’s finest poets, Jane Munro & Penn Kemp! Our host for the afternoon will be Phil Glennie.”

Through Zoom, the event reached an online audience with an active chat section, so attendees could be involved in the moment. The conversation itself among Jane, myself and our host, Philip Glennie, felt more intimately engaged and less of a performance than when a large audience was present as in earlier years. While Jane and I were ensconced at home, Phil was at Museum London, with Joshua Lambier behind the scenes managing the chat column.

From http://wordsfest.ca/events/2020/jane-munro-penn-kemp-in-conversation:

“Griffin Poetry Prize-winner Jane Munro returns with new poems that are spacious with interiority, alive with a hard-earned lightness. Waves carried a Glass Float—designed to hold up a fishing net—across the Pacific. Beached it safely. Someone’s breath is inside it. In Glass Float, her seventh collection, award-winning poet Jane Munro considers the widening of horizons that border and shape our lives, the familiarity and mystery of conscious experience, and the deepening awareness that comes with a dedicated practice such as yoga. This book is about connections: mind and body; self and others; physical and metaphysical; art and nature; west and east, north and south. In “Convexities,” the book’s opening poem, Munro quotes the grandfather who taught her to paint: “art is suggestion; art is not representation.” No concavities, he said. Only the “little hummocks” that her pencil outlined as she did contour drawings. Munro’s deft suggestion, her tracing of convexities, conveys underlying complexities, not by explication but by looking with eyes and heart open to where mysteries almost surface.”

“London’s Penn Kemp will join Munro to read from and discuss her new book of poems centred around the Thames River. Rivers are often used in mythology to represent boundaries; to cross the river is to transform. The poems in River Revery reflect the river Thames as it winds through the city of London, Ontario. Because the Thames forks into two streams at the city’s core, it was called Askunessippi, “the antlered river,” by the original Algonquin inhabitants. For Indigenous communities, it is Deshkan Ziibiing. In re-naming the river the Thames, English settlers colonized forbidding new territory as an imitation of ‘home,’ rather than embracing the vibrancy of the river as it is. A distillation of ecological concern is a current necessity in River Revery. Such inspiration in poetry is one source for right action since the Thames waters our gardens, real and imaginary.”

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Wordsfest 2020!

Jane Munro & Penn Kemp: In Conversation with Phil Glennie

from November 15, 2020

​The recording of my reading and conversation with Jane Munro is now up on https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=816107712501675&ref=watch_permalink

The Words Festival is very pleased to present two of Canada’s finest poets, Jane Munro & Penn Kemp! Our host for the afternoon was Phil Glennie.

Griffin Poetry Prize-winner Jane Munro returns with new poems that are spacious with interiority, alive with a hard-earned lightness.

Waves carried a glass float—designed to hold up a fishing net—across the Pacific. Beached it safely. Someone’s breath is inside it. In Glass Float, her seventh collection, award-winning poet Jane Munro considers the widening of horizons that border and shape our lives, the familiarity and mystery of conscious experience, and the deepening awareness that comes with a dedicated practice such as yoga. This book is about connections: mind and body; self and others; physical and metaphysical; art and nature; west and east, north and south. In “Convexities,” the book’s opening poem, Munro quotes the grandfather who taught her to paint: “art is suggestion; art is not representation.” No concavities, he said. Only the “little hummocks” that her pencil outlined as she did contour drawings. Munro’s deft suggestion, her tracing of convexities, conveys underlying complexities, not by explication but by looking with eyes and heart open to where mysteries almost surface.

London’s Penn Kemp will join Munro to read from and discuss her new book of poems centred around the Thames River.

Rivers are often used in mythology to represent boundaries; to cross the river is to transform. The poems in River Revery reflect the river Thames as it winds through the city of London, Ontario. Because the Thames forks into two streams at the city’s core, it was called Askunessippi, “the antlered river,” by the original Algonquin inhabitants. For Indigenous communities, it is Deshkan Ziibiing. In re-naming the river the Thames, English settlers colonized forbidding new territory as an imitation of ‘home,’ rather than embracing the vibrancy of the river as it is. A distillation of ecological concern is a current necessity in River Revery. Such inspiration in poetry is one source for right action since the Thames waters our gardens, real and imaginary.

Featured

On reading new work by Canadian women writers

And the Giller goes to Souvankham Thammavongsa for How to Pronounce Knife! Congratulations! And Congratulations as well to the other finalists!

Superb writing that I highly recommend, grouped here idiosyncratically.

Pairing Westerns: Gil Adamson’s Ridgerunner; Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel; Helen Humphreys’s Rabbit Foot Bill and Kate Pullinger’s Forest Green.

Pairing work set abroad: Shaena Lambert’s Petra; Janie Chang’s The Library of Legends; Louise Penny’s All the Devils Are Here. Lisa Robertson, Baudelaire Fractals. Pairing Caroline Adderson’s A Russian Sister and Sarah Leipciger, Coming Up For Air. AND Farzana Doctor’s Seven.

Pairing pandemic novels: Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars; Saleema Nawaz’s Songs for the End of the World and Larissa Lai’s The Tiger Flu.

Pairing books on relationship by Annabel Lyon, Consent; Lynn Coady, Watching You Without Me; Shani Mootoo, Polar Vortex;  Frances Itani, The Company We Keep.

Pairing books by Indigenous Writers: Michelle Good, Five Little Indians; Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, This Accident of Being Lost

Memoir: Lorna Crozier, Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)

Sans pareil: Naomi Klein, On Fire. Not a novel: I wish it were!

About to read (sometime, soon-ish):

Marianne Apostolides, I can’t get you out of my mind: a novel
Carol Bruneau, Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis
Cathy Marie Buchanan, The Day the Falls Stood Still
Cathy Marie Buchanan, Daughter of Black Lake
Catherine Bush, Blaze Island
Catherine Hernandez, Crosshairs
Maria Reva, Good Citizens Need Not Fear 
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies
Elizabeth Waterston,  Railway Ties 1888-1920

Hoping to read:
(Attention, London Library! Every other book listed here is in your collection. Please take the hint…)
Dede Crane, Madder Woman
Lorna Crozier, The House the Spirit Builds

Celebrating Wordsfest, tuning in to MORE Literary Arts!


Then back to new poetry. And back to writing…

Feature image: Daniela Sneppova
Photo of me age 7: Jim Kemp