Please join us tomorrow for a breath of fresh air, a breath of poetry and SPRING!
Host: Jennifer Chesnut, Environmentalist-in-Residence, London Public Library.
With special guest Penn Kemp, explore poems on the theme of Earth and create your own eco-poem. This reading and workshop is open for all levels of experience zoom.
Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication (Coach House, 1972). She was London Ontario’s inaugural Poet Laureate and Western University’s Writer-in- Residence. Chosen as the League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Artist (2015), Kemp has long been a keen participant in Canada’s cultural life, with thirty books of poetry, prose and drama; seven plays and multimedia galore. See http://www.pennkemp.wordpress.com, www.pennkemp.weebly.com.
Thursday, April 7, 7pm ET: Zoom reading and discussion with Huron Literary Society at Western University to encourage young writers on Mental Health and Literature with Q & A. I Presenters Vanessa Brown, Penn Kemp and Yoda Olinyk. Contact: <lschwa22@uwo.ca>. Play-writing as an expression of hope and possibility. Sponsored by Playwrights Guild of Canada.
Sunday, April 10, 6:30 pm. Live! Pre-concert conversation with Jennifer Chesnut and Penn Kemp on environmentalism and the arts, on poetry and local conservation awareness initiatives. 7:30 pm.Earth Speaks: A musical meditation on our collective responsibility to the planet. Chor Amica, Patrick Murray, guest conductor. Performance of ecopoetry by Jennifer and Penn. Oakridge Presbyterian Church, 970 Oxford St. W. London ON N6H 1V4. $25. Contact: patrick@patrickmurraymusic.net. https://www.choramica.ca/concerts.html
May (date TBA). Live! The Launch of Poems in Response to Peril: an Anthology (Pendas Productions/Laughing Raven Press). Dedicated to the poets and people of Ukraine from 48 Canadian poets. Readers: Penn Kemp, Richard-Yves Sitoski, and local contributors to the anthology as well as surprise guests. We have 200 pre-orders. Keep ’em coming! Poems in Response to Peril: an Anthology is 125 pages. $25 plus postage: order from r-sitoski@yahoo.ca. https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2022/03/21/poems-in-response-to-peril-an-anthology/
POEMS IN RESPONSE TO PERIL, our anthology with 48 Canadian poets in support of Ukraine, will be launched May 28, 2 pm, Blackfriars Bistro, 46 Blackfriars St., London ON! All welcome, an outdoor patio.
The anthology, all 122 pages, is out now and it is beautiful… a fitting tribute in solidarity with Ukraine! Order from r_sitoski@yahoo.ca: $25 plus post till our launch on May 28, then $30 plus post.
POETS IN RESPONSE TO PERIL, our Zoom on April 2, is now up, thanks to Richard-Yves Sitoski: h4. Truly a labour of love, from Canadian poets to Ukrainian poets and people. What a profound and poignant event, gathering 100 poets and participants coast to coast— holding fast for over three hours of words that we so needed to hear. Poetry is the ability to respond, and the poets did, in voices eloquently and powerfully expressed. This blog is intended to keep that community vibe flowing.
Part 1 of our zoom, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETCb_gHO0R4, features Penn Kemp, Richard-Yves Sitoski, Susan McCaslin, Svetlana Ischenko, Russell Thornton, Albert Dumont, Bänoo Zan, Celeste Snowber, Blaine Marchand and Marsha Barber.
Kudos to Rico (Richard-Yves Sitoski), our indomitable host, along with Owen Sound Public Library! Rico continues to gather our voices in poetry on https://www.youtube.com/user/veggiemeister/playlists, 49 so far! Send your videos to him, r_sitoski@yahoo.ca. And please take a listen when you can, when you need to hear these poems. Here’s celebrating National Poetry Month, #npm22.
Attached is our cover for POEMS IN RESPONSE TO PERIL, designed by Rico.
Here’s to the community of poets! Gathering voices: so many ways of maintaining connection. May the conversation continue! For updates, please see Gathering Voices, https://www.facebook.com/groups/PendasProductions.
Gathering Voices: poets and participants respond to our Zoom
A wonderful event! Still glowing from the sense of purpose generated when poets come together for an important cause. Poetry forever! Marsha Barber
Thank you all so much for what was an amazing event. Penn, Susan and Richard for your dedication to this cause, and all the poets and audience. It was deeply moving. Yvonne Blomer
– it was deeply moving, and healing. Thank you all! Kate Braid
It was an extraordinary afternoon hearing all the poets read, relating to these dreadful events in Ukraine. The strange thing is that I didn’t realize how I needed to hear the human reactions, responses poetically—Facing this issue head on (through poetry) is, to my mind, part of the eventual reconstruction of world community. Holly (& Allan) Briesmaster
Richard/Penn: Congratulations on an impressive Zoom launch! Of all the Zoom events in the past few years i have attended this was the most high profile and meaningful with poets caring about the Ukrainian crisis. Plus so many other topics that they are passionate about. I am so heartened Canadian poets are deeply engaged in the tragedies of the day. I look forward to seeing the anthology and am proud that when the history of these times is written there will not be a blank page for the poets. David Brydges
Today, I spent almost two hours in zoom poetry reading for “Poets In Response To Peril” as organized by Canadian Poet Penn Kemp. When the invasion of Ukraine began, she wanted to put together a chapbook, but instead, the outpouring of Canadian voices created a full-length book.. within days. This is a really remarkable and quick effort, and the reading had me in tears as a poetry and people lover. My cat enjoyed the reading as well. 🙂 The proceeds of the book sales will go to PEN Ukraine. Please consider purchasing this book in support of the voices of Ukraine and PEN Ukraine. email inquiries and orders to:r_sitoski@yahoo.ca Sarah M. Daugherty
My sincere thanks to Penn and Richard and the Library Zoom meister for arranging a truly astonishing afternoon of poetry, coast to coast. It was an honour to take part. Our poems now go out like prayers to Ukraine and , sadly, other places in our world where people suffering in peril may find a measure of comfort in our words. Poetry does have power. With love, Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni
Our time together yesterday reminded me of a statement I made years ago. This is it: “Time is the storage place of our memories. And the human heart is the storage place of our tears. I have gone to that place of memories and visited where tears are kept. What I retrieved was the notion that poetry is delightful to the human spirit.” I hope your Sunday is restful and emotionally uplifting. Albert Dumont
Congratulations on this impressive mobilization of poetic force in support of our allies and fellow artists under attack in Ukraine. Neil Eddinger
These poets…so amazing…all of them. Kim Fahner
What an event dear Penn, and such variety and diversity and even Ukrainian spoken! Brava! A huge life-changing Poets in Response to Peril event. Brava/bravo Richard and Penn!! The variety, poignancy, astoundingly creative and delightful videos all contribute to a masterful, memorable production. Katerina Vaughan Fretwell
We were particularly interested in your latest book since it also benefits those affected in the Ukraine. What a beautiful endeavour that helps shed light on the dreadful situation expressed with poetry. It is so beneficial and of course, our residents love reading poetry! Rebecca Gee
Dear Penn, Rico, Susan and all who made this special event possible…It was an emotional gathering of coast-to-coast poets and poems and I was honoured to be part of the outpouring of love and grief and hope at this time of peril. Here’s to peace and freedom indeed! Diana Hayes
Dear Penn & Rico, Warm thanks for hosting such a wonderful event! It was fabulous. I know it took a lot of energy to do that. You’re culture heroes! Excellent reading. — It came out great! Good to see and hear so many supportive authors! A strong reading set! — The book extends vital support of Ukraine while condemning war. What a massive job. Your combined energies on the reading, video and book are deeply appreciated. Here’s hoping that the war will come to an end soon. The world stands against the atrocities. It is good that Canadian writers also stand against such martial aggression. Thank you for it all, Sunflowers for Ukraine) 🌼🌼 🌼 Karl Jirgens
And thanks dear heart for all your continuing efforts. I love that the whole project began with the conviction that poetry makes everything happen…in its time. Patricia Keeney
Such an amazing project! I hope the blog post, the project (and the new book!) get lots of well-deserved attention and love! Renée Knapp
Thank you Richard-Yves Sitoski and Penn Kemp for all the work you put into Saturday’s very moving “Poets in Response to Peril” event. It felt like a teaser for the upcoming anthology. Now I can’t wait to read “Poems in Response to Peril”. Mary Little
Wonderful initiative, great event. And thanks to you Penn, to Richard-Yves, to Susan McCaslin who worked so hard to bring it to fruition. Thanks to Tim for the technical support. A great gathering. Splendid poetry. Now people should purchase the Anthology and help support Ukraine. But it was great to feel a part of the poetic community this afternoon. I look forward to reading the anthology. There were many powerful, moving poems this afternoon. Blaine Marchand
Dear Penn & Richard, Thanks to you both for collaborating on this wonderful and meaningful event. I hope more books orders flow in. Thanks for all you are doing to get more poets’ voice out to the public, Penn. And thanks for the links you are providing to preserve people’s responses to Saturday’s amazing event. The event continues opening in ever-widening circles! Susan McCaslin
Yes, thank you Penn, Rico, Tim, Susan, and all of my fellow poets for a most intense and meaningful event. I’ll remember it! Susan McMaster
One of the poets said that she was falling in love with the community of poets on the zoom. Certainly, it was a wonderful group of poets, both in terms of their poetry and also their humanity. In the midst of sorrow about the war, there was also much beauty in the poets’ words…The breadth and depth of the poems shared by the poets was emotionally moving. Thank you again for putting together such a phenomenal project. Ola Nowasad
I would like to order a copy of Poems in Response to Peril. I attended the Zoom event on April 2nd and it was phenomenal. Lisa Reynolds
That was a very rich and varied collection of poems and poets. A delight to be a part of the gathering. Well done, organizers. Thanks! Peggy Roffey
Sorry Penn for not to be able to participate at event with my voice. I was just ear but not voice. Anyway, I already doing my best with colegues writer here in Bosnia to help some of Ukrainian writer to find temporarry home here in Sarajevo and to be evacuate with great help of German Goethe Institute. I hope I am doing right, aven I have Memory of myself rejecting to leave Sarajevo with my two Children on the beginnig of four years long siege of my city starting 1992. All the best to you and friends making that event possible. Goran Simic Because of a poor connection from Bosnia, Goran was able to be with us only “by ear but not voice.” How ironic, because the voices of those who have known war need to be heard! As this conversation points out: Dear Mr Simic, (And Everyone else…) I have not had the pleasure of meeting you, but I do know of your fine work, and have just now read two of your poems, https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/13065/poems-about-migration-love-and-war-by-bosnian-poet-goran-simic. It does not seem right that you could not share your voice at this event, particularly because in addition to your gifts as a poet, you are much closer in many ways to the bloody events unfolding in the Ukraine than many of us here. Robert Girvan Dear Robert, thank you for kind words about my poetry. I will be glad to record one of my poems to participate for video Message as Canadian/ Bosnian contribution of poets who alarm the world about attack on Ukrainian state, culture and history. All of my friends writers who survived siege in Sarajevo still feel alive the same scars watching destruction of city and civilians in Ukraina. But with pride for people not to give up struggle. I will do video asap because I spend most of my day on the hill keeping company to the four street abandoned dogs we adopted five years ago. Goran Simic Dear Goran, Excellent! I look forward to seeing you and hearing your voice and words. The lucky ones who have not (yet) faced war, bow their heads to those who have endured it, and listen. Robert Girvan Goran has sent the video of his poem for https://www.youtube.com/user/veggiemeister/playlists. I hope you do too.His greetings from Sarajevo and the poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW1KSzzPQ9c&list=PLDARA01MjoyW7WccH9j6yGtI3XZhcE0BD&index=41.
I am still feeling the pleasure of seeing you in your great blue and yellow costume, and the honour of being involved in the hours of poetic tension that was so invigorating, even in the perilous present. Elizabeth Waterston
All I can say is Thank you and love to you. You are a great inspiration, your spirit, insights and grace encourage me, inspire. Sheri-D Wilson
Please let me add my voice to those who have already thanked the organizers and all who attended yesterday’s reading. It was indeed a marathon and, as one of the final readers, it was gratifying to see how many people hung in through the whole reading in an amazing outpouring of solidarity, support and yes, love. As Richard has noted, if even a fraction of that positive reverse-bomb energy intervenes in places in the world where people’s lives are torn by violence, we will have done our bit for peace and for the sustainable future of humanity. I look forward to receiving my copies of the anthology. Susan Wismer
What is the responsibility of poets in times of crisis? The ability to respond.
On April 2 at 2pm EDT, you’re invited to attend Poets in Response to Peril, an online event in which poets offer reflections and poems on the power and limitations of poetry in times of crisis. Registration: https://rsitoski.com/event-details/poets-in-response-to-peril…
Among our featured poets are Russell Thornton and Svetlana Ischenko. They will read from Poems from the Scythian Wild Field by celebrated Ukrainian poet Dmytro Kremin (Ekstasis Editions), first in Ukrainian and then in their English translation.
We are also reaching out directly to Ukraine, at the request of an Ukrainian publisher “to inspire and give support”: https://anetta-publishers.com/pages/16.
Cupcakes From Blackfriars Bistro & Catering: “In our commitment to support the Ukraine war relief, we will be donating 100% of the sales of our Ukraine Flag-inspired Cupcakes to the humanitarian relief efforts & fight against the Russian Occupation. You can pick-up cupcakes in our pantry/larder or pre order by calling 519-667-4930.” And they will send cupcakes too! See blackfriarsbistro.com, 46 Blackfriars St, London, ON N6H 1K7.
Couplets This poem was written for April’s National Poetry Month theme of “Intimacy”.
Our Kind of Intimate
What could be more intimate than constant streaming on our screens, images plastered on the occipital nerve, imprinted, planted, permanent?
What more intimate than a tiny cell, replicating green and reptilian-spiked, one that multiplies in our bodies as Covid spreads, as familiar Omicron?
What more intimate than a deep love roping in family, friends, and foreign faces on the Web to our known orbit?
In the knowledge that we are all one multi-armed huge beast we call humanity. backed for or against, wholly, alone.
What could be more intimate than a marriage under siege, the bride’s bouquet between her and him in camouflage, weapons at the ready?
A sharp pang of metal piercing flesh, the rude intrusion of steel into bone. Sounds haunting the bloodstream linger along what once were halls
of the bombed maternity hospital, children still under the walls, not to speak of infants, mothers in labour.
What more intimate than the time when thought coalesces into form between pen and paper, text onto key board? Before words arise and fall
in place, the sacred alphabet arranged just so in orderly progression that never before has taken shape, as the poem is birthed? Its aftermath, crimson placenta
of relief, grief given way to gratitude that something remains while entire civilizations collapse and fall. The fall resounding rings hollow down our ears.
In our time and beyond, throughout the barriers of history being broken, the current kind of intimate intimidates us not into submission—but to action.
This month, recommendations of women’s writing, with comments. In a time of loss and transition and the chaos of world crises, I’m having trouble organising, so I tend to read instead of writing or editing. A sometimes necessary escape these days. A book is so contained with its beginning, middle, and end. Covers we can close with a sense of accomplishment and of completion. I love how books weave around one other, sequentially, thematically, without my conscious intent. So grateful to London Public Library for their engaging and enticing collection! The dregs of winter: a perfect time for tomes and for poems.
Angie Abdou, This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Wilderness Memoir. In her dedication, Angie Abdou hopes the reader will receive the book like a long letter from a good friend. And it is: a sweet, endearing, sometimes heart-breakingly honest memoir. But earlier, the price of being so open was a devastating social media attack: Abdou describes the effects in this memoir of healing. We learn what it is what Abdou plans to do with her “one wild and precious life”. During the Pandemic, it’s a lovely treat to hike in the mountains vicariously with her. And oh, I loved her cottonwood!
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half. Many different ways of exploring identity and choice and choice’s consequences.
Natasha Brown, Assembly. Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti and Bernardine Evaristo walk into a bar… and meet Natasha Brown. Assembly is honed stiletto-sharp, not a hair out of place, however the protagonist feels in classist, racist England. “Unfair”, whine the various white men who confront her in this short, perfect novel.
Sharon Butala, This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life. Always brave, honest and necessary writing on ageism.
Clare Chambers, Small pleasures: a novel. So many charming pleasures: beautiful writing, engaging characters and utterly engaging plot. A delicious read and reprieve from current events and dystopias.
Sadiqa de Meijer, The outer wards Sadiqa de Meijer, Alfabet / alphabet: a memoir of a first language. “Or was there an influence of origins at work, an onomatopoeic element with ecologically ambient sounds and forms giving rise to each language?” “I tried to contain where the words went, but there are submerged forces in writing—in the land-water realms of consonant vowel—that require our surrender.” “a sort of sideways drift has taken place among the words” “The untranslatable is inherent in all intercultural contact, where its particles may accumulate and become tropes of otherness.”
Junie Désil, Eat salt / gaze at the ocean: poems “scudding back and forth through history” “There isn’t a pastness”
Cherie Dimaline, Hunting by Stars (A Marrow Thieves Novel). Harrowing but vital reading, beyond the pale: “a new cacophony was breaking in. It was just up ahead. Rose could feel it, cresting the audible edge of tomorrow. It was coming on dark wings, making short work of time and distance. And this would be the way they resisted. This would be the reclamation. This was the girl who would be loud.” Beware pale groupies!
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence. Louise Erdrich herself reads the audiobook in a delicious rendition as funny as it is powerfully poignant. And the novel includes a bookseller called Louise! A ghost story that starts on Halloween 2019 and progresses through that annus horribilis till Halloween 2020: one long sentence of the present. Glorious!
Louise Gluck, Faithful and virtuous night Louise Gluck, American Originality: Essays on Poetry. Essential and astonishing reading and re-reading for any poet and reader of poetry. “What remains is tone, the medium of the soul.” “The silenced abandon of the gap or dash, the dramatized insufficiency of self, of language, the premonition of or visitation by immanence: in these homages to the void, the void’s majesty is reflected in the resourcefulness and intensity with which the poet is overwhelmed.” “the use of the term ‘narrative’ means to identify a habit of mind or type of art that seeks to locate in the endless unfolding of time not a still point but an underlying pattern or implication; it finds in moving time what lyric insists on stopped time to manifest.”
Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry. An astonishingly accomplished and moving collection. The Muses, daughters of Memory inspire us. “History and elegy are akin. The word ’history’ comes form an ancient Greek verb meaning ‘to ask.’” Anne Carson “Lumen means both the cavity of an organ, literally an opening, & a unit of luminous flux, Literally, a measurement of how lit The source is. Illuminate us. That is, we too, Are this bodied unit of flare, The gap for lux to breach.”
Vivian Gornick, Taking a long look: essays on culture, literature, and feminism in our time. A good read for #InternationalWomensDay! In her memoir, Vivian Gornick, looking back on the feminist movement in which she was deeply involved, understands “what every good memoirist understands: that the writer’s own ordinary, disheveled, everyday self must give way to that of a narrating self — a self who will tell the story that needs to be told.” #IWDBell Hooks, All about love: new visions. “Love invites us to grieve for the dead as ritual of mourning and as celebration… We honor their presence by naming the legacies they leave us.”
Lauren Groff, Matrix: a novel. “Visions are not complete until they have been set down and stepped away from, turned this way and that in the hand.” Loved this celebration of mediaeval visionary abbess, Marie of France!
Joy Harjo, Poet warrior: a memoir In these quotes, you can experience her voice directly as written: “And the voice kept going, and Poet Warrior kept following no matter Her restless life in the chaos of the story field.” “Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff. This is the first world, and the last.” “The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. We are evidence of this praise.” “When you talk with the dead You can only go as far as the edge of the bank.” “Frog in a Dry River”
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko. Fascinating depiction of a war-torn Korean family saga, now filmed. All too relevant still.
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom. I’m listening to Maggie Nelson ON FREEDOM ironically, given Canada’s situation and the loss of innocence in that word’s current associations.
Molly Peacock, Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door. A lovely study of painters and painting. Tonalists “connected light both to emotions—and to the sounds of emotions. Using musical vocabulary, like nocturne or symphony, they suggested that emotions could be heard through paint”. “tap into childhood to find the ‘transitional object;” as D.W. Winnictott calls it: “‘Our first adventures into reality are through the objects” with “vitality or reality of [their] own.”
Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness by one of my favourite writers.
Charlie Petch, Why I Was Late “To be performed with dulcimer.” “Things You Didn’t Know about Me” Self-referential and fun. Performative poems, as in The nerves centre but stronger.
Angela Szczepaniak, The nerves centre. A ten-act cast of characters: poetry in performance, poet performing! A study of anxiety, her titles from self-help with dramatis personae. My fave: Mime Heckler. Utterly uttered!
Lisa Taddeo, Animal: a novel is a ferocious diatribe against male sexual violence. Since the book is dedicated to her parents and she lives with her husband and daughter, I wondered about the story behind the novel.
Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise. Nicely structured fin de siècle tome, over three centuries, based on Washington Square and similarly named characters not to mention Hawaiian royalty. Deja vu, David Mitchell!
Zoe Whittal, The Spectacular. Three generations of women negotiating current, changing times. It’s complicated, very. Spectacular, if you’re 21. I’d have liked much more from the oldest woman but it’s a long novel as is. Reminiscent of David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue.
Joy Williams, Harrow. Harrowing indeed, and disjointed. “a sacred grove, a temenos. It had once meant asylum and within it was asulos—the inviolable. It protected what was within and excluded that which was without.” Kafka’s hunter, “Gracchus, the literal expression in a concrete image of an abstraction.”
This month offers recommendations of women’s writing, with comments. In a time of loss and transition and the chaos of world crises, I’m having trouble organising, so I tend to read instead of writing or editing. A sometimes necessary escape these days. A book is so contained with its beginning, middle, and end. Covers we can close with a sense of accomplishment and of completion. I love how books weave around one other, sequentially, thematically, without my conscious intent. So grateful to London Public Library for their engaging and enticing collection! The dregs of winter: a perfect time for tomes and for poems.
Angie Abdou, This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Wilderness Memoir. In her dedication, Angie Abdou hopes the reader will receive the book like a long letter from a good friend. And it is: a sweet, endearing, sometimes heart-breakingly honest memoir. But earlier, the price of being so open was a devastating social media attack: Abdou describes the effects in this memoir of healing. We learn what it is what Abdou plans to do with her “one wild and precious life”. During the Pandemic, it’s a lovely treat to hike in the mountains vicariously with her. And oh, I loved her cottonwood!
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half. Many different ways of exploring identity and choice and choice’s consequences.
Natasha Brown, Assembly. Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti and Bernardine Evaristo walk into a bar… and meet Natasha Brown. Assembly is honed stiletto-sharp, not a hair out of place, however the protagonist feels in classist, racist England. “Unfair”, whine the various white men who confront her in this short, perfect novel.
Sharon Butala, This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life. Always brave, honest and necessary writing in this age of ageism.
Clare Chambers, Small pleasures: a novel. So many charming pleasures: beautiful writing, engaging characters and utterly engaging plot. A delicious read and reprieve from current events.
Sadiqa de Meijer, The outer wardsSadiqa de Meijer, Alfabet / alphabet: a memoir of a first language. “Or was there an influence of origins at work, an onomatopoeic element with ecologically ambient sounds and forms giving rise to each language?” “I tried to contain where the words went, but there are submerged forces in writing—in the land-water realms of consonant vowel—that require our surrender.” “a sort of sideways drift has taken place among the words” “The untranslatable is inherent in all intercultural contact, where its particles may accumulate and become tropes of otherness.”
Junie Désil, Eat salt / gaze at the ocean: poems “scudding back and forth through history” “There isn’t a pastness”
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence. Louise Erdrich herself reads the audiobook in a delicious rendition as funny as it is powerfully poignant. And the novel includes a bookseller called Louise! A ghost story that starts on Halloween 2019 and progresses through that annus horribilis till Halloween 2020: one long sentence of the present. Glorious!
Annie Ernaux, Hôtel Casanova: et autres textes brefs. Autofiction écriture at its finest in curious glimpses: “l’écriture, du rapport qu’elle a avec le monde réel.” My school French was good for Ernaux’s lucent prose, until the slang of dialogue…
Lucy Foley, The Guest List. A predictable but fun mystery set on a secluded Island… murder ensues.
Louise Gluck, Faithful and virtuous night Louise Gluck, American Originality: Essays on Poetry. Essential and astonishing reading and re-reading for any poet and reader of poetry. “What remains is tone, the medium of the soul.” “The silenced abandon of the gap or dash, the dramatized insufficiency of self, of language, the premonition of or visitation by immanence: in these homages to the void, the void’s majesty is reflected in the resourcefulness and intensity with which the poet is overwhelmed.” “the use of the term ‘narrative’ means to identify a habit of mind or type of art that seeks to locate in the endless unfolding of time not a still point but an underlying pattern or implication; it finds in moving time what lyric insists on stopped time to manifest.”
Lauren Groff, Matrix: a novel. “Visions are not complete until they have been set down and stepped away from, turned this way and that in the hand.” Loved this celebration of mediaeval visionary Marie of France!
Joy Harjo, Poet warrior: a memoir In these quotes, you can experience her voice directly as written: “And the voice kept going, and Poet Warrior kept following no matter Her restless life in the chaos of the story field.”“Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff. This is the first world, and the last.” “The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. We are evidence of this praise.” “When you talk with the dead You can only go as far as the edge of the bank.” “Frog in a Dry River”
Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry. An astonishingly accomplished and moving collection. The Muses, daughters of Memory inspire us. “History and elegy are akin. The word ’history’ comes form an ancient Greek verb meaning ‘to ask.’” Anne Carson “Lumen means both the cavity of an organ, literally an opening, & a unit of luminous flux, Literally, a measurement of how lit The source is. Illuminate us. That is, we too, Are this bodied unit of flare, The gap for lux to breach.”
Vivian Gornick, Taking a long look: essays on culture, literature, and feminism in our time. A good read for #InternationalWomensDay! In her memoir, Vivian Gornick, looking back on the feminist movement in which she was deeply involved, understands “what every good memoirist understands: that the writer’s own ordinary, disheveled, everyday self must give way to that of a narrating self — a self who will tell the story that needs to be told.” #IWD
Bell Hooks, All about love: new visions. “Love invites us to grieve for the dead as ritual of mourning and as celebration… We honor their presence by naming the legacies they leave us.”
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko. Fascination depiction of a war-torn Korean family saga, now filmed. All too relevant still.
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom. I’m listening to Maggie Nelson ON FREEDOM ironically, given Canada’s truck convoy versus convoys to Ukraine. Oh, the loss of innocence in that word’s current associations.
Molly Peacock, Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door. A lovely study of painters and painting. Tonalists “connected light both to emotions—and to the sounds of emotions. Using musical vocabulary, like nocturne or symphony, they suggested that emotions could be heard through paint”. “tap into childhood to find the ‘transitional object;” as D.W. Winnicott calls it: “‘Our first adventures into reality are through the objects” with “vitality or reality of [their] own.”
Charlie Petch, Why I Was Late “To be performed with dulcimer.” “Things You Didn’t Know about Me” Self-referential and fun. Performative poetry like The nerves centre, but stronger.
Angela Szczepaniak, The nerves centre. A ten-act cast of characters: poetry in performance, poet performing! A study of anxiety, her titles from self-help with dramatis personae. My fave: Mime Heckler. Utterly uttered!
Lisa Taddeo, Animal: a novel is a ferocious diatribe against male sexual violence. Since the book is dedicated to her parents and she lives with her husband and daughter, I wondered about the story behind the novel.
Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise. Nicely structured fin de siècle tome, over three centuries, based on Washington Square and similarly named characters not to mention Hawaiian royalty. Deja vu, David Mitchell!
Zoe Whittal, The Spectacular. Three generations of women negotiating current, changing times. It’s complicated, very. Spectacular, if you’re 21. I’d have liked much more from the oldest woman but it’s a long novel as is. Reminiscent of David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue.
Joy Williams, Harrow. Harrowing indeed. “a sacred grove, a temenos. It had once meant asylum and within it was asulos—the inviolable. It protected what was within and excluded that which was without.” Kafka’s hunter “Gracchus, the literal expression in a concrete image of an abstraction.”
This month, with comments:) In a time of loss and transition, I’m having trouble organising my mind, so I read instead of writing or editing. A book is so contained with its beginning, middle, and end. Covers we can close with a sense of accomplishment and of completion. I love how books weave around one other, sequentially, thematically, without my conscious intent. So grateful to London Public Library for their engaging and enticing collection! The dregs of winter: a perfect time for tomes and for poems.
Recommended Reads for International Women’s Day and ON….
Angie Abdou, This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Wilderness Memoir. In her dedication, Angie Abdou hopes the reader will receive the book like a long letter from a good friend. And it is: a sweet, endearing, sometimes heart-breakingly honest memoir. But earlier, the price of being so open was a devastating social media attack: Abdou describes the effects in this memoir of healing. We learn what it is what Abdou plans to do with her “one wild and precious life”. During the Pandemic, it’s a lovely treat to hike in the mountains vicariously with her. And oh, I loved her cottonwood!
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half. Many different ways of exploring identity and choice and choice’s consequences.
Natasha Brown, Assembly. Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti and Bernardine Evaristo walk into a bar… and meet Natasha Brown. Assembly is honed stiletto-sharp, not a hair out of place, however the protagonist feels in classist, racist England. “Unfair”, whine the various white men who confront her in this short, perfect novel.
Sharon Butala, This Strange Visible Air: Essays on Aging and the Writing Life. Always brave, honest and necessary writing.
Clare Chambers, Small pleasures: a novel. So many charming pleasures: beautiful writing, engaging characters and utterly engaging plot. A delicious read and reprieve from current events.
Sadiqa de Meijer, The outer wards Sadiqa de Meijer, Alfabet / alphabet: a memoir of a first language. “Or was there an influence of origins at work, an onomatopoeic element with ecologically ambient sounds and forms giving rise to each language?” “I tried to contain where the words went, but there are submerged forces in writing—in the land-water realms of consonant vowel—that require our surrender.” “a sort of sideways drift has taken place among the words” “The untranslatable is inherent in all intercultural contact, where its particles may accumulate and become tropes of otherness.”
Junie Désil, Eat salt / gaze at the ocean: poems “scudding back and forth through history” “There isn’t a pastness”
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence. Louise Erdrich herself reads the audiobook in a delicious rendition as funny as it is powerfully poignant. And the novel includes a bookseller called Louise! A ghost story that starts on Halloween 2019 and progresses through that annus horribilis till Halloween 2020: one long sentence of the present. Glorious!
Annie Ernaux, Hôtel Casanova: et autres textes brefs. Autofiction écriture at its finest in curious glimpses: “l’écriture, du rapport qu’elle a avec le monde réel.” My school French was good for Ernaux’s lucent prose, until the slang of dialogue…
Lucy Foley, The Guest List. A predictable but fun mystery set on a secluded Island… murder ensues.
Louise Gluck, Faithful and virtuous night Louise Gluck, American Originality: Essays on Poetry. Essential and astonishing reading and re-reading for any poet and reader of poetry. “What remains is tone, the medium of the soul.” “The silenced abandon of the gap or dash, the dramatized insufficiency of self, of language, the premonition of or visitation by immanence: in these homages to the void, the void’s majesty is reflected in the resourcefulness and intensity with which the poet is overwhelmed.” “the use of the term ‘narrative’ means to identify a habit of mind or type of art that seeks to locate in the endless unfolding of time not a still point but an underlying pattern or implication; it finds in moving time what lyric insists on stopped time to manifest.”
Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry. An astonishingly accomplished and moving collection. The Muses, daughters of Memory inspire us. “History and elegy are akin. The word ’history’ comes form an ancient Greek verb meaning ‘to ask.’” Anne Carson “Lumen means both the cavity of an organ, literally an opening, & a unit of luminous flux, Literally, a measurement of how lit The source is. Illuminate us. That is, we too, Are this bodied unit of flare, The gap for lux to breach.”
Joy Harjo, Poet warrior: a memoir In these quotes, you can experience her voice directly as written: “And the voice kept going, and Poet Warrior kept following no matter Her restless life in the chaos of the story field.”“Every day is a reenactment of the creation story. We emerge from dense unspeakable material, through the shimmering power of dreaming stuff. This is the first world, and the last.” “The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. We are evidence of this praise.” “When you talk with the dead You can only go as far as the edge of the bank.” “Frog in a Dry River”
Vivian Gornick, Taking a long look: essays on culture, literature, and feminism in our time
Lauren Groff, Matrix: a novel. “Visions are not complete until they have been set down and stepped away from, turned this way and that in the hand.” Loved this celebration of mediaeval visionary Marie of France!
Bell Hooks, All about love: new visions. “Love invites us to grieve for the dead as ritual of mourning and as celebration… We honor their presence by naming the legacies they leave us.”
Min Jin Lee, Pachinko. Fascination depiction of a war-torn Korean family saga, now filmed. All too relevant still.
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom. I’m listening to Maggie Nelson ON FREEDOM ironically, given Canada’s truck convoy versus convoys to Ukraine. Oh, the loss of innocence in that word’s current associations.
Molly Peacock, Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door. A lovely study of painters and painting. Tonalists “connected light both to emotions—and to the sounds of emotions. Using musical vocabulary, like nocturne or symphony, they suggested that emotions could be heard through paint”. “tap into childhood to find the ‘transitional object;” as D.W. Winnicott calls it: “‘Our first adventures into reality are through the objects” with “vitality or reality of [their] own.”
Angela Szczepaniak, The nerves centre. A ten-act cast of characters: poetry in performance, poet performing! A study of anxiety, her titles from self-help with dramatis personae. My fave: Mime Heckler. Utterly uttered!
Lisa Taddeo, Animal: a novel is a ferocious diatribe against male sexual violence. Since the book is dedicated to her parents and she lives with her husband and daughter, I wondered about the story behind the novel.
Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise. Nicely structured fin de siècle tome, over three centuries, based on Washington Square and similarly named characters not to mention Hawaiian royalty. Deja vu, David Mitchell!
Zoe Whittal, The Spectacular. Three generations of women negotiating current, changing times. It’s complicated, very. Spectacular, if you’re 21. I’d have liked much more from the oldest woman but it’s a long novel as is. Reminiscent of David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue.
If you’d like a numbered copy signed to you, let me know, pennkemp@gmail.com. If you’d like a numbered copy, unsigned, please contact beliveaubooks@gmail.com.
With special thanks to Dennis Siren, visionary videographer, for his videopoem of a poem in the book, “Translation”, dedicated to my father, painter Jim Kemp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqzgfLJtws&t=22s.
“There you are”, from A Near Memoir, is at 8:14 in my Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action, up on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9mS75i.
Endorsements for A Near Memoir: new poems
The poems in this unusually substantial chapbook reflect with charming insight on key moments and memorable forks in the road in the poet’s early life, then move to more sombre reckonings with mortality, the traumas of war, and the trees and environs of her Souwesto region, and conclude with inspirational “challenges” to us all in facing our uncertain future. Stylistic aplomb is underpinned, throughout, by mindful perception, impassioned concern, and a visionary verve. — Allan Briesmaster, author of The Long Bond (Guernica Editions)
d the deep without. It draws from the innermost regions of subjective consciousness while opening to social engagement and planetary awareness. The title suggests a genre both personal and universal, exploring the double lineages of family and the larger polis, our civic communities. Here we meet various members of her family, including her father, the visual artist. Penn has transformed his legacy into spoken word and a poetics where sounds and silences converge: “I still wait with paper’s white space till / words arise, images in words, watching them come into form…” As we participate, we are whirled into places where perception sharpens, and we too are transformed.
Penn Kemp’s A Near Memoir carries the reader simultaneously to the deep within and the deep without. It draws from the innermost regions of subjective consciousness while opening to social engagement and planetary awareness. The title suggests a genre both personal and universal, exploring the double lineages of family and the larger polis, our civic communities. Here we meet various members of her family, including her father, the visual artist. Penn has transformed his legacy into spoken word and a poetics where sounds and silences converge: “I still wait with paper’s white space till / words arise, images in words, watching them come into form…” As we participate, we are whirled into places where perception sharpens, and we too are transformed. —Susan McCaslin, author of Heart Work (Ekstasis Editions)
A Near Memoir collects a confluence of poems around Penn Kemp’s beloved subjects: art, nature, community, the divine feminine, and flowingness of life. —Sharon Thesen, author of The Wig-Maker (New Star Books)
Penn Kemp’s A Near Memoir: new poems explores the earliest stirrings of the creative imagination in childhood and the joys of associative thinking. With narrative skill and vivid sensual detail, it discovers and uncovers the effect of adult perspectives on a young mind, the puzzling life lessons of parents and teachers, the wisdom and heartbreak of nature. Ironic and lyrical, accurate and ambiguous, playful and profound, these finely tuned poems—whether enlightened moments or deep dives into an evolving self—flow with the ease and excitement that only a seasoned artist can bring. A book full of surprises and affirmation. —Patricia Keeney, author of Orpheus in Our World (NeoPoiesis Press)
“Diving into a new book of poems by @pennkemp is like setting out on an adventure. You never know what you’ll come across and @JoeBatLFPress says her newest offering, A Near Memoir: New Poems, is no different.”
Hey, Red! Great poems!!!! So sensuous and lyrical and sly. —Catherine Sheldrick Ross, author of The Pleasures of Reading (Libraries Unlimited)
Penn Kemp ‘s book is wonderful in her mastery of language and attention to detail. A gorgeous read. A really great gift!” —Jude Neale
Nice day in the Grove for a new read from a dear friend and mentor, the magical Penn Kemp — Nick Beauchesne
A near Memoir has arrived and it is a treasure. So beautifully produced. With your life writings personal and planetary. And with such touching story-telling visuals. —Patricia Keeney
A Near Memoir: new poems (Beliveau Books) is launching on Earth Day, April 22! Want a taste of my new work? Four poems from A Near Memoir (“Drawing Conclusions”, “A Convoluted Etymology of the Course Not Taken”, “Celebrating Souwesto Trees” & “You There”) appear in Beliveau Review, Vol. 2 No. 2 Issue 5, out now on https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines.
National Poetry Month Readings
Sunday, April 18, 4pm EDT. Our group reading from the anthology, Voicing Suicide, is hosted by Josie di Sciascio-Andrews with Daniel G Scott, Editor. Spread the word and join us if you can. Here is the link: meet.google.com/pwz-yqew-fiu Contact: <voicingsuicide@gmail.com>.
Sunday, April 25, 2021, 1 PM EDT. National Poetry Month zoom and launch of Femmes de Parole/Women of their Word, edited by Nancy R Lange. The readers for Femmes de parole / Women of their word on the 25th will be Mireille Cliche (QC), Catherine Fortin (QC), Louise Bernice Halfe, Penn Kemp, Nancy R Lange(QC), Genevieve Letarte, (QC), Sharon Thesen and Sheri-D Wilson! Contact: rappelparolecreation@hotmail.com.
Happy National Poetry Month, NPM2021! These readings are sponsored by the League @CanadianPoets!
“Drawing Conclusions”, “A Convoluted Etymology of the Course Not Taken”, “Celebrating Souwesto Trees” and “You There”. Beliveau Review, Vol. 2 No. 2 Issue 5, Spring 2021. https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines.
“To Carry the Heart of Community Wherever You Find Yourself”. Sage-ing With Creative Spirit, Grace and Gratitude, http://www.sageing.ca/sageing36.html, P. 12. Number 36, Spring 2021.
“What Matters”, “Studies in Anticipation”, “Hope the Thing”, Possible Utopias: the Wordsfest Eco Zine, Issue 6. http://www.wordsfest.ca/zine, March 2021.
Superb Canadian writing highly recommended, grouped idiosyncratically
First, by women
Pairing books by Indigenous Writers: Michelle Good, FiveLittle Indians; Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, This Accident of Being Lost, Islands of Decolonial Love and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies.
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 BC novelists: Shaena Lambert’s Petra Maria Reva; Good Citizens Need Not Fear; Caroline Adderson’s A Russian Sister and Anakana Schofield’s Bina.
Pairing books on relationship: Christy Ann Conlon’s Watermark; Annabel Lyon, Consent; Lynn Coady, Watching You Without Me; Shani Mootoo, Polar Vortex; Vivek Shraya, The Subtweet; Frances Itani, The Company We Keep.
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 fiction set abroad: Aislinn Hunter’s The Certainties. Janie Chang’s The Library of Legends; Sarah Leipciger’s Coming Up For Air; Marianne Micros’s Eye; Louise Penny’s All the Devils Are Here; Lisa Robertson’s Baudelaire Fractals. Anne Simpson’s Speechless AND Farzana Doctor’s magnificent Seven.
Non-Fiction Carol Bishop-Gwyn, Art and Rivalry: The Marriage of Mary and Christopher Pratt Lorna Crozier, Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats) Naomi Klein, On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal Theresa Kishkan, Euclid’s Orchard & Other Essays Amanda Leduc, Disfigured Susan McCaslin & J.S. Porter, Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine Catherine Sheldrick Ross, Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie, and Paulette M. Rothbauer, Reading still matters: what the research reveals about reading, libraries, and community Susan Vande Griek and Mark Hoffmann, Hawks Kettle, Puffins Wheel Elizabeth Waterston, Railway Ties 1888-1920 Jody Wilson-Raybould, From where I stand: rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a stronger Canada
Awards The Writers’ Trust Award goes to Gil Adamson for Ridgerunner! The Giller goes to Souvankham Thammavongsa for How to Pronounce Knife The Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize goes to Armand Garnet Ruffo
Reading Canadian men Billy-Ray Belcourt, A history of my brief body Dennis Bock, The Good German Michael Christie, Greenwood: A Novel of a Family Tree in a Dying Forest Desmond Cole, The Skin We’re In David Frum, Trumpocalypse William Gibson, Agency Rawi Hage, Beirut Hellfire Society Thomas King, Indians on Vacation Thomas King, Obsidian: A DreadfulWater Mystery Kurt Palka, The hour of the fox: a novel Andrew Pyper, The residence Iain Reid, I’m Thinking of Ending Things Robin Robertson, The long take: a Noir Narrative Jesse Thistle, From the Ashes Clive Thompson, Coders Richard Wagamese, Keeper’n Me
Back to Poetry, Canadian and Beyond Madhur Anand, A new index for predicting catastrophes: poems Margaret Atwood, Dearly Adèle Barclay, Renaissance normcore Gary Barwin, For it is a PLEASURE and a SURPRISE to Breathe: new & selected Poems Heather Birrell, Float and scurry Jericho Brown, The Tradition Lucas Crawford, The high line scavenger hunt Amber Dawn, My Art is Killing Me Dom Domanski, Bite down little whisper Klara du Plessis, Ekke Nathan Dueck, A very special episode / brought to you by Nathan Dueck Chantal Gibson, How She Read Julie Hartley, Deboning a dragon Karen Houle, The Grand River Watershed: a folk ecology Patricia Keeney, Orpheus in Our World Kaie Kellough, Magnetic equator Canisia Lubrin, The Dyzgraph*st Daphne Marlatt, Intertidal: The Collected Earlier Poems, 1968 – 2008 Jane Munro, Glass Float Harold Rhenisch, The Spoken World Robin Richardson, Knife throwing through self-hypnosis: poems Anne Simpson, Strange attractor: poems John Elizabeth Stintzi, Junebat Moez Surani, Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real?
Anthologies Best Canadian poetry 2019 Measures of astonishment: poets on poetry / presented by the League of Canadian Poets Caroline Adderson, editor. The Journey prize stories: the best of Canada’s new writers Nyla Matuk, editor. Resisting Canada: an anthology of poetry Adam Sol, How a poem moves: a field guide for readers of poetry
Beloved Books on Spiritual Ecology Tim Dee, Landfill: Notes on Gull Watching and Trash Picking in the Anthropocene Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass Diana Beresford-Kroeger, To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest Robert Macfarlane, Underland Richard Powers, The Overstory Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
Deepest, Longest and most Transformative Read of 2020 Peter Kingsley, Reality, Catafalque Press, 2020 (and Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom)
International Reads John Banville, Snow Neil Gaiman, American Gods: The moment of the storm. 3 Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings Lily King, Writers and Lovers Natsuo Kirino, The goddess chronicle E. J Koh, The magical language of others: A memoir Raven Leilani, Luster Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights William Maxwell, So long, see you tomorrow Ian McEwan, Machines like me: and people like you Ian McEwan, Cockroach Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton: the revolution David Mitchell, Utopia Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere Naomi Shihab Nye, Cast away: poems for our time Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet and Judith Tommy Pico, Feed Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist Omid Safi, Radical love: teachings from the Islamic mystical tradition Jake Skeets, Eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers / poems by Jake Skeets Mirabai Starr, Wild mercy: living the fierce and tender wisdom of the women mystics Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough Ruth Ware, The Turn of the Key Jennifer Weiner, Big Summer Niall Williams, This is Happiness Bob Woodward, Rage
About to read (sometime, soon-ish) Madhur Anand, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart Marianne Apostolides, I can’t get you out of my mind: a novel Nina Berkhout, Why Birds Sing Carol Bruneau, Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis Cathy Marie Buchanan, Daughter of Black Lake Catherine Bush, Blaze Island Louise Carson, The Cat Possessed Dede Crane, Madder Woman Lorna Crozier, The House the Spirit Builds Francesca Ekwuyasi, Butter Honey Pig Bread Heather Haley, Skookum Raven Catherine Hernandez, Crosshairs Natalie Jenner, The Jane Austen Society Shari Lapena, The End of Her Jessica J. Lee, Two trees make a forest: travels among Taiwan’s mountains & coasts in search of my family’s past Tanis MacDonald, Mobile Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic Noor Naga, Washes, Prays C.L. Polk, The Midnight Bargain Damian Rogers, An Alphabet for Joanna: A Portrait of My Mother in 26 Fragments Johanna Skibsrud, Island Susan Swan, The Dead Celebrities Club Emily Urquhart, The Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, My Father, and Me Natalie Zina Walschots, Hench: a novel
AND… Jordan Abel, Nishga André Alexis, The Night Piece: Collected Short Fiction Bill Arnott, Gone Viking John Barton, Lost Family David Bergen, Here the Dark Wade Davis, Magdalena: river of dreams Cory Doctorow, Radicalized Cory Doctorow, Attack Surface Gary Geddes, Out of the ordinary: politics, poetry and narrative Steven Heighton, Reaching Mithymna: among the volunteers and refugees on Lesvos Kaie Kellough, Dominoes at the Crossroads David A. Robertson, Black Water Mark Sampson, All the Animals on Earth J.R. (Tim) Struthers (Editor), Alice Munro Everlasting: Essays on Her Works II Mark Truscott, Branches Ian Williams, Reproduction
Most of these books have come to me through London Public Library, now celebrating 125 years! Thank you! Others came from Indie bookstores and friends. None from Amazon.
Penn Kemp 