Join us Thursday, April 27 for poems of joy with Penn Kemp!
The fabulous Blackfriars Bistro joyously celebrates National Poetry Month, #npm23.
Come at 6pm for dinner, a drink or dessert, and stay for poems on the theme of JOY! Or come for poetry at 7pm.
Penn reads from odes to joy through the ages and her own recent poetry along with community readings and participatory sounding of odes:)! Admission is free but reservations are necessary if you are coming at 6pm: call (519) 667-4930.46 Blackfriars St, London N6H 1K7 https://blackfriarsbistro.com/. Contact Penn pennkemp@gmail.com, www.pennkemp.weebly.com.
Surprised by Joy
Blessed be here. Blessed be clever cardinals
who vary their song into language only other
cardinals interpret. Blessed be red squirrels
who scold all intruders into silence below.
Blessed be hostas and fern, the mix of wild
with cultivated. Blessed be the cultivated
soil that allows for splendid fluorescence.
Blessed be the breakers upon the shoal.
Blessed be hushed wing of crow and after
landing on spruce branch, a raucous caw.
Blessed be the interchange of story, space
to be alone together. Blessed be the quiet.
Blessed be haecceity, an expanse of time.
Blessed be completion. Blessed be night
that covers the cottage in a moiré spread
and seeps into warm dreams of possibility.
Blessed be old bare black cherry, dead
in winter’s past blast but ready to turn
now into fire’s best wood, slow-burning,
hot. Blessed be the poets whose refrains
run through their still too busy brain, still
listening, till dawn chorus bursts into joy.
And celebration of the daily begins again
in jubilation, in improbable hope, arising.
“Surprised By Joy” has been chosen as the League of Poet’s poem for JOY in National Poetry Month #npm23! It is featured April 28 on https://poets.ca/poetrypause/.
Adapted from “Surprised By Joy”, River Revery, by Penn Kemp, Insomniac Press.
The poem is dedicated to Catherine Ross, much loved, much missed.
Carry the poem, “Surprised By Joy”, on April 27 for poem in your pocket day, https://poets.ca/programs/pocketpoem/.
As Lewis Carroll chortles, “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
Penn Kemp 