About

Penn Kemp
London Ontario

Bio: London ON performance poet, activist and playwright Penn Kemp (M.Ed.) Her latest poetry is INCREMENTALLY (text and album, https://www.hempressbooks.com/authors/penn-kemp); A BAKER'S DOZEN; P.S. with Sharon Thesen (Gap Riot); A Near Memoir (Beliveau Books 2021) and River Revery (Insomniac, 2019): see http://www.riverrevery.ca for animations! In 2018 Local Heroes (Insomniac Press) and Fox Haunts (Aeolus House) were launched across Canada. Penn was writer-in-residence at Caetani Cultural Centre, Vernon BC http://www.kalwriters.com/residency/residency.html. She is the League of Canadian Poets' 2015 Spoken Word artist of the year (http://poets.ca/2015/04/01/golden-beret-2015-penn-kemp/) and their 40th Life Member. She edited two anthologies: Performing Women and Women and Multimedia. Out now is a new collection of poetry, Barbaric Cultural Practice (Quattro Books). Her play, The Triumph of Teresa Harris, was produced in 2017 at The Palace Theatre, London ON. Copyscripts are available from https://www.playwrightsguild.ca/playwright/penn-kemp. Penn has been giving creativity workshops, teaching and performing her poetry since 1966. As the inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of London (2010-12), she presented poetry at many civic functions. As Canada Council Writer-in-Residence for Western University for 2009-10, her project was the DVD, Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action, Pendas Productions. Penn was Creative Age London's Writer-in-Residence in 2015. She also received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal for service to arts and culture. Penn has published 30 books of poetry and drama, had six plays and ten CDs produced as well as several award-winning videopoems. Since her first book was published by Coach House Press in 1972, she has been pushing textual and aural boundaries, often in participatory performance work. Many of her recent CDs are what Penn terms "Sound Operas": poetic narratives that weave sound, imagery and music in the counterpoint of many voices. Having performed in festivals around the world, most recently in Britain, Brazil and India, Penn lives in London, where she edits poetry for Pendas Productions. Penn has been heralded by the Writers’ Union as a “one woman literary industry”. Updates: http://mytown.ca/pennletters, linkedin.com/pennkemp,twitter.com/pennkemp.

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