Celebrating Can Lit in Spring, 2024

✨ New!✨https://booklisti.com/pennkemp
✨https://booklisti.com/booklist/books-penn-kemp-penn-kemp/lxnj6lr ✨https://booklisti.com/booklist/recent-canadian-fiction-women-penn-kemp/lx3a9yv
My annotated recommended list of recent English Canadian women’s fiction for International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month.

✨ “After the Cull” and “Devotion”. Synaeresis #23, pp. 14-15. April 2024, https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines, https://2e8a8d6d-e97c-4235-92c8-7aa31bae0d77.filesusr.com/ugd/830f0d_fd5cfc8dc493496eb85acb418f658fe4.pdf

✨ Spring, 2024: “Searching For His Original Face”, Sage-ing With Creative Spirit, Grace and Gratitude, #48, https://www.sageing.ca/ https://www.sage-ing.com/Sage-ing48.pdf

✨“The Lords and Ladies of the Fermi Bubbles”, a collaborative poem with Harol Rhenisch. Masque & Spectacle, An arts & literary journal, 
https://masqueandspectaclejournal.wordpress.com/2024/03/01/the-lords-and-ladies-of-the-fermi-bubbles-penn-kemp-and-harold-rhenisch/

✨Interview on CV2 with me about Incrementally by Sophie Guillas: 
https://contemporaryverse2.ca/interviews/an-interview-with-penn-kemp/  

✨Poems for my beloved granddaughter, Ula Podesta Chalmers: 
https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/for-ula-two-poems/

✨ECH Presents: A Community of Trees. Embassy Cultural House.  Online exhibit launch, www.embassyculturalhouse.ca/a-community-of-trees. My piece is “Celebrating Souwesto Trees”.

✨ “The Big Ask”, the Transitions issue, Uproar,
https://lawrencehouse.ca/the-big-ask/

✨“Losing the Vernacular”, with image by Jim Kemp. The Vernacular Journal, 
https://vernacularjournal.com/On-Losing-the-Vernacular, Winter 2024

✨Jim Andrews from Vancouver included my poem “Lethologica” in his wondrous See of Po series: https://seaofpo.vispo.com?p=pk. And on Jim Andrews’s manifesto, manual, and magazine, https://vispo.com/writings/essays/Sea_of_Po2.pdf: P. 61. For Sea of Po, I wanted to write a language poem that would lend itself to animation, to movement, to be read in swirls, side to side, and yet form couplets. Hence, Lethologica, so that the word is not lost in Lethe’s forgetful current, but is re-imagined as image, as colour.

✨Forthcoming Publications

✨ Spring, 2024: Interview with me by Richard Capener, Hem Press

✨ May, 2024: “After the Cull” and “Devotion”, Synaeresis: arts + poetry https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com, https://beliveaubooks.wixsite.com/home/magazines

✨ “The Conference of the Birds” with Harold Rhenisch, Canadian Literature, 2024

✨Upcoming In-person Readings

✨ Sunday, April 28, 2-4pm.  Reading among the Alpacas by Penn Kemp and Katie Jeresky with cellist Luc Julian. 2211 Egremont Drive, RR5 Strathroy ON, N7G 3H6. Contact: Thandi, info@timbuktufarms.com. By donation. See https://www.timbuktufarm.com/event-details/poetry-readings-alpacas.

✨ Wednesday, June 5, 6:30-8pm. Black Mallard Reading Series features Penn Kemp and D.A. Lockhart, Mykonos Restaurant, 572 Adelaide St. N., London. World Environment Day! Penn’s reading is sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets and the Canada Council for the Arts. Free.  https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home.

✨ Saturday, June 15, 10:30-11:30am.  Sounds of the Forest: Music and Poetry Reading at Meadowlily Nature Reserve on the south side of the Thames River between Highbury Avenue and Meadowlily Road, London, ON N6G 2N5. Passport to Nature in support of Thames Talbot Land Trust, https://www.thamestalbotlandtrust.ca/passport_to_nature. Free.

✨ Monday, September 23, 2024, 7pm. Art Bar Reading Series, Free Times Café, 320 College Street. Toronto, ON M5T 1S3 w. of Markham. Features Penn Kemp, Contact: (416) 967-1078 artbarpoetry@gmail.com. https://www.artbarpoetryseries.com/post/upcoming-events. $10.00.
​
✨Now up!

Intent on Flowering, anthology, Rose Garden Press, 2024. Contributing poets: Katie Jeresky, Penn Kemp and Jessica Lee McMillan. This remarkable collection is curated by Rose Garden Press for their handprinted book. Contact: hello@rosegardenpress.ca, Michelle Arnett and Michele Vanderwal @rosegarden_press. To order: https://rosegardenpress.ca/intent-on-flowering/. Chapbooks are available @rosegarden_press.

Check out:
✨Catherine Owen, Episode 5, “Performing your Poetry”.
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/catherine960/episodes/Episode-5-Performing-your-Poetry-e2f9etr . She draws from my piece, “Performing Your Work”, 
https://poets.ca/performing-your-work/.

✨Kevin Spenst, “Chuffed About Chapbooks” on my project, “Poem for Peace in Many Voices”. SubTerrain issue #95, 2024.

✨Recent Launches

✨March 1, 2004, 1pm EST.  ECH Presents: A Community of Trees. Embassy Cultural House.  Online exhibit launch, www.embassyculturalhouse.ca/a-community-of-trees. Artists participating in the exhibit will discuss their work. Curators Emmy Meredith, Ron Benner, Jamelie Hassan and Olivia Mossuto. My piece is up here:  https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/poem-to-celebrate-our-trees/.

✨February 25, 12:30-1:30pm EST. Penn Kemp and Katie Jeresky read from INTENT ON FLOWERING with cellist Luc Julian in Heeman’s Greenhouse, 20422 Nissouri Road, Thorndale Juna Guetter writes: “Just returned from this beautiful event! A lovely poetry reading with Katie Jeresky and Penn Kemp along with the musical accompaniment by Luc Julian celebrating Spring! Great to see and hear such talent weaving together in sweet collaboration! Many thanks!!! 🙏😍”

✨February 10, 2024. Book launch and poetry reading from Rose Garden Press’s new release, Intent on Flowering, with three poets: Penn Kemp, Katie Jeresky and Jessica Lee McMillan. On the Lunar New Year! Missed this lovely weaving of voices? Here it is https://fb.watch/q7u_oWXOJq/ ! Thanks @RoseGardenPress! Special #thanks to @JoshLambier, https://wordsfest.ca/ 

Celebrating Poetry in 2024

✨Virtual Book Launch:
Saturday, February 10,12:30pm EST. Pour a cup of tea and get cozy for this virtual book launch and poetry reading from Rose Garden Press’s new release, Intent on Flowering, with three poets: Penn Kemp, Katie Jeresky  and Jessica Lee McMillan. Please register here: @wordsfestival. On the Lunar New Year! Free. Chapbooks are available for purchase @rosegarden_press.

✨In-person Poetry Readings: Chapbooks will be available for purchase.

Sunday, February 25, 12:30-1:30pm EST. Join Penn Kemp and Katie Jeresky with cellist Luc Julian in Heeman’s lush tropical greenhouse for a special in-person poetry reading of Rose Garden Press’s new release, Intent of Flowering. Heeman’s Greenhouse, 20422 Nissouri Road, Thorndale, ON N0M 2P0. Grab a tea, coffee, shake or sundae when you arrive at the in-house Cafe Beanery and join us in the houseplants section! RSVP by sending an email to katiejeresky@gmail.com. Free.

✨ Sunday, April 28, 2-4pm. Poetry Reading among the Alpacas by Penn Kemp and Katie Jeresky with cellist Luc Julian. 2211 Egremont Drive, RR5 Strathroy ON, N7G 3H6. Contact: Thandi, info@timbuktufarms.com. Celebrating National Poetry Month on the theme of Weather. By donation.

✨ Monday, April 29, 2024, 7pm. Art Bar Reading Series, Free Times Café, 320 College Street. Toronto, ON M5T 1S3 w. of Markham. Features Penn Kemp, Roger Greenwald, and Barbara Pelman, https://www.artbarpoetryseries.com/post/upcoming-events. Contact: (416) 967-1078 artbarpoetry@gmail.com. Cover $10.00.

✨ Wednesday, June 5, 6:30-8pm. Black Mallard Reading Series features Penn Kemp and D.A. Lockhart, Mykonos Restaurant, 572 Adelaide St. N., London ON. It’s World Environment Day! https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home. Free.   

✨ Saturday, June 15, 10:30-11:30am.  Sounds of the Forest: Music and Poetry Reading at Meadowlily Nature Reserve on the south side of the Thames River between Highbury Avenue and Meadowlily Road, London, ON N6G 2N5. Passport to Nature in support of Thames Talbot Land Trust, https://www.thamestalbotlandtrust.ca/passport_to_nature. Free.

“Celebrating the Forest of Forest City” , online exhibit launch, Embassy Cultural House, London ON. www.embassyculturalhouse.ca  Curators Emmy Meredith, Ron Benner, Jamelie Hassan and Olivia Mossuto: embassyculturalhouse@gmail.com

Upcoming Events

New!
✨Interview on CV2 with Penn Kemp by Sophie Guillas:  https://contemporaryverse2.ca/interviews/an-interview-with-penn-kemp/ !

✨“Losing the Vernacular”, with image by Jim Kemp. The Vernacular Journal, https://vernacularjournal.com/On-Losing-the-Vernacular, Winter 2024

✨Jim Andrews from Vancouver included my poem “Lethologica” in his wondrous See of Po series: https://seaofpo.vispo.com?p=pk. And on Jim Andrews’s manifesto, manual, and magazine, https://vispo.com/writings/essays/Sea_of_Po2.pdf: P. 61. For Sea of Po, I wanted to write a language poem that would lend itself to animation, to movement, to be read in swirls, side to side, and yet form couplets. Hence, Lethologica, so that the word is not lost in Lethe’s forgetful current, but is re-imagined as image, as colour.

✨Upcoming In-person Poetry Readings

Sunday, February 25, 12:30-1:30pm EST. Join Penn Kemp and Katie Jeresky with cellist Luc Julian in Heeman’s lush tropical greenhouse for a special in-person poetry reading of Rose Garden Press’s new release, Intent of Flowering. Heeman’s Greenhouse, 20422 Nissouri Road, Thorndale, ON N0M 2P0. Grab a tea, coffee, shake or sundae when you arrive at the in-house Cafe Beanery and join us in the houseplants section! RSVP by sending an email to katiejeresky@gmail.com. Free. ​Chapbooks available for purchase.

✨ Monday, April 22. Earth Day.

✨ Sunday, April 28, 2-4pm. Poetry Reading among the Alpacas by Penn Kemp and Katie Jeresky with cellist Luc Julian. 2211 Egremont Drive, RR5 Strathroy ON, N7G 3H6. Contact: Thandi, info@timbuktufarms.com. Celebrating National Poetry Month on the theme of Weather. By donation.

✨ Monday, April 29, 2024, 7pm. Art Bar Reading Series, Free Times Café, 320 College Street. Toronto, ON M5T 1S3 w. of Markham. Features Penn Kemp, Roger Greenwald, and Barbara Pelman, https://www.artbarpoetryseries.com/post/upcoming-events. Contact: (416) 967-1078 artbarpoetry@gmail.com. Cover $10.00.

✨ Wednesday, June 5, 6:30-8pm. Black Mallard Reading Series features Penn Kemp and D.A. Lockhart, Mykonos Restaurant, 572 Adelaide St. N., London ON. It’s World Environment Day! https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home. Free.   

✨ Saturday, June 15, 10:30-11:30am.  Sounds of the Forest: Music and Poetry Reading at Meadowlily Nature Reserve on the south side of the Thames River between Highbury Avenue and Meadowlily Road, London, ON N6G 2N5. Passport to Nature in support of Thames Talbot Land Trust, https://www.thamestalbotlandtrust.ca/passport_to_nature. Free.
​
✨ “Celebrating the Forest of Forest City”, online exhibit launch, Embassy Cultural House, London ON. www.embassyculturalhouse.ca. Curators Emmy Meredith, Ron Benner, Jamelie Hassan and Olivia Mossuto: embassyculturalhouse@gmail.com

Now up!
Intent on Flowering, anthology, Rose Garden Press, 2024. Contributing poets: Katie Jeresky, Penn Kemp and Jessica Lee McMillan. This remarkable collection is curated by Rose Garden Press for their handprinted book. Contact: hello@rosegardenpress.ca, Michelle Arnett and Michele Vanderwal @rosegarden_press. To order: https://rosegardenpress.ca/intent-on-flowering/

​For my beloved granddaughter, Ula Podesta Chalmers:  https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/for-ula-two-poems/ 

Forthcoming:

“Celebrating Tree”, ECH Presents: A Community of Trees. Embassy Cultural House, February 2024, https://www.embassyculturalhouse.ca/

“Searching For His Original Face”, Sage-ing With Creative Spirit, Grace and Gratitude, #48 Spring 2024, https://www.sageing.ca/

Interview with me by Richard Capener, Hem Press, March 2024.

“The Conference of the Birds” with Harold Rhenisch, Canadian Literature, 2024March 2024.

Check out:

Catherine Owen, Episode 5, “Performing your Poetry”. She draws from my piece, “Performing Your Work”, https://poets.ca/performing-your-work/.
https://open.spotify.com/embed/show/61BjGB6bvF6pX6Vlst7xdk

Kevin Spenst, “Chuffed About Chapbooks” on my project, “Poem for Peace in Many Voices”. SubTerrain issue #95, 2024.

Recently and Recording
✨Virtual Book Launch:
Saturday, February 10, 2024. Book launch and poetry reading from Rose Garden Press’s new release, Intent on Flowering, with three poets: Penn Kemp, Katie Jeresky  and Jessica Lee McMillan. On the Lunar New Year! Missed this lovely weaving of voices? Here it is https://fb.watch/q7u_oWXOJq/! Thanks @RoseGardenPress
! Special #thanks to @JoshLambier https://wordsfest.ca/ @PHWestern

Recently Read...
January 17, 7 pm. Antler River Poetry, Celebrating small presses! Karen Schindler and Rob McClennan. With readings by Katie Jeresky and Penn Kemp from Intent on Flowering, Rose Garden Press, hello@rosegardenpress.ca, rosegardenpress.ca  

2 POEMS for my beloved granddaughter, Ula Podesta Chalmers, read at her Celebration of Life. Sunday, December 17. AIA, Toronto Island.
https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/for-ula-two-poems/ 

Poems For Ula

Ula Marguerite Podesta Chalmers June 08 2007 December 10 2023

My daughter Amanda has written the most beautiful obituary celebrating Ula.
https://necrocanada.com/obituaries-2023/canada-ontario-toronto-ula-marguerite-podesta-chalmers-june-08-2007-december-10-2023

For my granddaughter. One day we’ll read Poems to Ula by water. Meanwhile cellist Lucas Tenzen and I perform my poem “In Light” for her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=groiPy9t81M.

Thoughts & prayers do console, as does poetry.

A Wake

       for Ula Marguerite Podesta Chalmers

Feel the net, the nest, the next step
holding beloved Ula, her family and
friends as we move beyond closing in
to opening up, opening out to all that

cannot be known while we remain in
body. We can wholly feel Ula in all her
gentle, generous intensity, her fierce
love, her expanding field. As she enters

the Unknown, leaving in the wake of her
laugh, her sky-lit smile’s radiance, our hearts.
Ready to receive everything she is and would
have been. Ready to carry on what she

completed before her time, what we in our
small view considered her time.  May such
Intelligent Beauty and Joy ever trump grief as
her smile expands to every possible horizon.

May pain be left behind while we are carried
forward in her Wake and held in the larger bowl
of Being.  With her.  Without her.  And truly
with her.  Beauty, inner and outer.  Beauty.

BELIEVE…

In the space of a year she has learned to sit,
to stand, to walk, to totter forward in a run.

She has seen one full round of the seasons.
She wraps her family round her little finger.

Now just before dusk we stroll hand in hand
to witness the pelicans’ evening beach patrol.

Gliding over the sea in formation, skimming
just overhead, flapping slow time, in synch.

Ula studies the procedure, dropping my hand
to edge forward, neck outstretched, arms aero-

dynamically angled.  She flaps and flaps along
the sand, following the pelican flight, ready

for that sudden lift.  Again, again, till the last
pelican has flown.   Dragging her heels home,

Ula braces her body against the rising breeze,
bewildered that she too can’t take off to sky

but game to try again tomorrow…

Her Orbit of Ellipsis

My granddaughter is going as Wonder Woman
for Halloween. She’s practised swinging her
Lariat of Truth so I’m reading up on Artemis,

protectress of young girls and the archetype for
our current Wonder Woman. Arrow to hand, she
alights on the mark, drawing her bow on intruders.

Artemis herds young artoi, girls of eight or so away
from polis, the city, into wide, wilder woods where she
reigns Queen and they her willing apprentices stay

snared till puberty. Artoi, little Bears, they follow
their Great Bear into the chase and Orion hides,
the hunter hunted and flung out to constellation.

My granddaughter will go trick or treating and
return with a gleeful sack full of eternal returns.

Such small cosy comforts subside as the year slips
at an entrance to enchantment, the larger dark
that awaits us all. And the Greater Bear grins.

Poem for Human Rights Day

Arms And The Boy

In our time all the world’s worst
clichés are actualised in stark paradox,
explosive irony.

I am swimming in happiness
rain cocooning my window pane

when TV presents the boy
whose eyes whose eyes

I fall through the scream as if to land
among proud and elegant peoples
divided by civil, uncivil arms.

Dispossessed of the West they thought they knew.
Dis/oriented, where do they turn?

Women and kids cleaving, cleft, bereft.

Institutions crack under cloud cover.

Shovels at a narrow grave.
“The image that struck me most
was a fourteen year old boy

just skin and bones. The men were
burying him when
crossed, his last gesture,

an ache up arms’ inner
two tears ran down his cheeks.”

That boy survived but cannot speak.

Language is lost in war, though lies thrive.

from Barbaric Cultural Practice, Quattro Books

Solace for the Newly Bereaved

What holds Sorrow and Joy in its lap?
‘Setsunai’ implies what has faded from
brightness, what can’t quite be recalled,
beyond knowing that everything passes.
Snow dropping on snow-spangled trees.

We share this deep new reality for
which no words suffice…maybe one
in Japanese, expressing the loss of
ten thousand things. Something quiet
in the snow, snow, the silencing snow.

Poems for my granddaughter are up: https://pennkemp.wordpress.com/2023/12/13/for-ula-two-poems/.

Love and ease for 2024,
Penn

Painting, The Cosmic Egg (a Cardinal’s egg) by Jim Kemp

Rest and the rest is eas(ier) is my motto…

from THE WINTER WIDOW

Solace for the Newly Bereaved

What holds Sorrow and Joy in its lap?
‘Setsunai’ implies what has faded from
brightness, what can’t quite be recalled,
beyond knowing that everything passes.
Snow dropping on snow-spangled trees.

We share this deep new reality for
which no words suffice…maybe one
in Japanese, expressing the loss of
ten thousand things. Something quiet
in the snow, snow, the silencing snow.

 https://createforhealing.com/create-for-healing-magazine-the-art-of-overcoming/

The Winter Widow (i)

Sometimes I hear you speaking.
More often you nod approval or
shake your head to comment in
replay, in dream, in small glimpses.

You hover about at back of mind, at
nape of neck, those startled rising hairs.

The Winter Widow (ii)

The trick is knowing not to choose but to listen.
The choice is made, already. You are wafting
between up and down, between dimensions I
don’t as yet know. The indeterminate unknown
prompts me to poetry, to remember you there.

Stones Beneath the Surface, https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home/books. https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home/post/stones-beneath-the-surface-is-now-available-to-order

for Gavin Stairs, Beloved

Samhain & the Veils Open

Forthcoming
October 31st to 5th November.“Wishing Well” from http://www.riverrevery.ca. “Buenos deseos” Spanish translation by Camilo Bosso. Mary McDonald’s videopoem “Wishing Well” on http://www.riverrevery.ca will be shown in “CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUBJECTIVITY”: Debate con Mary McDonald, Ian Gibbins y Sarah Tremlet. MALDITO FESTIVAL de Videopoesía /MALDITO FESTIVAL, Albacete, Spain. https://malditofestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/MALDITO-FESTIVAL-Programa-VII-EDICION-2023.pdf.

Wednesday, November 1, 2023. “3 favorite reads in 2023”, https://shepherd.com/. My choices: Emma Donoghue, Susan McCaslin and Harold Rhenisch. My 4th: Alicia Elliot’s new AND THEN SHE FELL.

Saturday, November 4, 2023, 1pm. Reading for Climate Change, Victoria Park, London ON through our local Power Up event, https://globalpowerup.org/ ~ through 350.org.

Tuesday, November 14, 2023, 7pm ET.  “Heart to Art”, video for Quai Nocent Docent (What Hurts Teaches): A Collection of Poems and Musings. The Friendly Spike Theatre. Contact: sarah.wells@live.ca

​Wednesday, November 15, 2023, 6:30pm to 8:00pm.  Launch of the anthology, Stones Beneath the Surface. Mykonos Restaurant, 572 Adelaide St. N., London ON https://blackmallardpoetry.wixsite.com/home/books

April 29, 2024, 7pm. Art Bar, Free Times Café, 320 College Street. Toronto, ON M5T 1S3. On College w. of Markham· (416) 967-1078. Feature, artbarpoetry@gmail.com

Now up!
Doesn’t this great review make you want to read/hear Incrementally?https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2023/10/laura-kerr-incrementally-by-penn-kemp.html
The text, Incrementally (88 pages and free!) is now up on https://www.hempressbooks.com/shop/p/incrementally-by-penn-kemp ! Album is on https://angrystarlings.bandcamp.com/ https://www.hempressbooks.com/angrystarlings https://www.hempressbooks.com/authors/penn-kemp
3 poems “from Night Orchestra”, “Declination”, “Bees Needs” are up in Interpoem: A Visual Anthology. Editor, Laura Kerr, https://sedserio.com/about

E. Ruth Strebe filmed “Night Orchestra” when I was reading it with audience participation that included alpacas and…:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okzs9hnbvQc 1.232

You can hear more of my techniques on “The Craft of Writing”: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn2HRTLuQOA

Painting by James Kemp

Reviewing THE RIDGE by Robert Bringhurst

by Penn Kemp
Contemporary Verse 2, Summer 2023, Vol. 46 No.1. P. 66-68, contemporaryverse2.ca
The Ridge
by Robert Bringhurst
Harbour Publishing, 2023
168 pp.; $22.95

This new poetry collection by Robert Bringhurst is well worth the wait: an occasion
to celebrate. Harbour Publishing has produced a beautiful book. The cover image is
of a powerfully evocative wood engraving, black on vibrant red, by Richard Wagen-
er. The first two pages present long lists of Bringhurst’s publications, impressive both
in breadth and depth: Poetry, Translation, Prose and Edited Works, in an order of
priority that is significant. Also significant is the poet’s dedication to beautiful letter-
press limited editions, like “Ten Poems with One Title” by Barbarian Press, included
in this present volume. The eight parts of this collection vary from one poem to ten.
The care in every detail, from typography to layout, displays a lifetime of attention:
a spaciousness on the page reflects the spaciousness of the poet’s perception. The
Ridge is chiseled, as if flint were shaped by a skilled carver into instruments of use to
the community, if we open our ears and listen.

The Ridge stands handsomely on its own, but to read it in the context of
Bringhurst’s entire oeuvre is a marvel. He wears his learning lightly and explains
what is needed. Still, best keep a dictionary or Dr. Google handy because his many
cultural references, from the Upanishads through Herakleitos to earth sciences, only
enrich your reading.

The book is the summation of a life embodied in the senses. Bringhurst is as gener-
ous in his output as in his acknowledgements. Elegies pay homage to a community
of writers: Stan Dragland, Victor Golla, Barry Lopez, and P.K. Page. A musical col-
laboration with Jan Zwicky set to Hayden includes the score (p. 59). The staves
of music provided are simple enough that an amateur can pick the notes out on a
keyboard. They add an immersive solemnity to a tradition, Christianity, that is then
set in the wider context of the earth itself with the interplay of words into music.
Bringhurst is constantly questioning our assumptions, with an acuity of mind
trained in the sciences and rooted in the sensorium. Take the poem “Stopping By”
(p. 85): the title alone conjures Robert Frost’s beloved poem, which begins “Whose
woods these are I think I know.” Robert Bringhurst’s first line in response is more
ambiguous, debating the very idea of ownership: “Whose woods they are I do not
know” (p. 85). He stands the original on its head: “How can trees be owned?”

When a poem bursts through a hallowed older poem like this, it carries the tradition
into the present, with a difference. Bringhurst challenges the notion of ownership:
“I only have to be here
long enough to take a breath,
And then it’s clear he did not own them,
nor do I.
What is it possible to own?” (p.87)
Bringhurst answers on the same page with the notion of “belonging, not owning.”
“it’s taken us our lives
to get this clear. You know
it’s what our lives are for.”

What triumph to achieve a clarity that costs nothing less than everything. The
Ridge is the culmination of long, close observation. Humanity is not primary in
these poems; earth is. If we knew we belonged to the earth, how could we destroy
so much? These words take new life as Bringhurst reads the collection’s centrepiece,
“The Ridge,” on line, in place, on the ridge he calls home. From the perspective
of age, he stands “in this / vicinity of space,” not looking down at his readers, but
around. We are transported to the specifics of Quadra Island’s ecological past, pres-
ent and future on the West Coast of Canada. The poem goes deep into old time—
before the ravens, before the trees, back, back, but also up, to the cosmos. Reaching
from particular details out to the abstract, these poems are portals that open and
open, and on. Such far-sightedness entices his readers to take the long view as well.
Further, he seems to say. This way, one more step. Look. Listen. The respect for the
natural world in Bringhurst’s poetry is contagious. As field guide, Bringhurst listens
to the land, and we can too, if we heed.

Riffing off Gary Snyder, Bringhurst asks:
“And is that what the land
understands that we don’t?
No self in self…
Suppose the land just understands
that it belongs. That’s all…
Could we belong to it?” (p. 88).

Bringhurst continues:
“The way we are, we don’t belong.
We’re passing by or passing through.”
These poems offer a very Buddhist sense of a world that is constantly appearing
and disappearing:
“whatever is real is always barely
coming into view or going away” (p. 87)

A reader’s small concerns drop off in the face of immensity that Bringhurst pres-
ents, with the courage it takes to cross so many borders and return with a traveler’s
tale to tell. To enter “The Ridge” is to step into a wider space, an old growth forest,
a ribbed cathedral, a larger presence. He is in place and he takes solace in the par-
ticulars of beauty around him. The land he dwells on becomes the concerns that he
dwells on in contemplation. He engages all the senses, mind very much included in
the insights with which he articulates his world. Bringhurst speaks for the land, and
surely that is what poets are required to do at this imperiled juncture for the world.
Participants in his inquiry, readers are encouraged to drop into stillness and attend.
Attention must be paid. If not now, when?

What’s the role of poetry? Who will listen to our prophets, our poets? Bringhurst
doesn’t stop at easy conclusions. But there is hope in language: “a poem is discov-
ered, not made, a poem is a well” (p. 82). “[A]s Wittgenstein put it: Astonishment
/ is thinking,” Bringhurst writes (p. 139), and these poems are thinking astonish-
ment. There is comfort in such articulation, whittled into stark and authoritative
simplicity.

May this book reach those who so desperately need this consolation and solace,
and its imperative. Courage, mes braves. It is in our hands to embrace the world and
to express its needs. Earth of course carries on very well by herself, left to her own
devices, but we, humanity, are reminded: do no harm.

Penn Kemp
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5328234357

Press Release for our Celebration of Ukraine

MEDIA RELEASE

For Immediate Release

UKRAINE TRIBUTE AND FUNDRAISING EVENT AT GRACE LONDON, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2023

London, ON

Grace Restaurant and Poems in Response to Peril proudly present Celebrating Ukraine: A Small Business and Artisan Market and Dinner Experience. This event will be held on Wednesday, August 23, the day before Ukrainian Independence Day.

The fundraising event will feature a daytime market from 2:00 pm-5:00 pm for Ukrainian small businesses and artists to network and sell their wares. We encourage everyone to stop by and support our newly arrived and established Ukrainian Canadian community. Ukrainian-owned businesses who are interested in participating may send inquiries to angie@gracelondon.ca.

Join us at Grace Restaurant for the Ukraine tribute dinner at 6 pm. We will serve a traditional Ukrainian cuisine-inspired menu, carefully crafted in collaboration with our Ukrainian friends to ensure authenticity and cultural integrity. Chef/owner Angela Murphy is excited to share this Ukrainian “Taste of Home”.

Poems in Response to Peril, co-edited by poets Penn Kemp and Richard-Yves Sitoski, will be featured. Nine contributing poets will read from this anthology dedicated to Ukraine, accompanied by a Ukrainian folk song played by Mary Ashton. This anthology brings together poems by some of Canada’s most prominent poets, in response to the current crisis in Ukraine and other perils afflicting our troubled times. A copy of Poems in Response to Peril will be included in the $120.00 price of the dinner. Our cheque for $3,000 from funds raised by book sales will be presented to the Aid for Artists Fund through the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.  

Celebrating Ukraine is a joint effort to honour and support the Ukrainian arts, culture and people as the war rages on. Part of the proceeds from this event will be donated to the Canada-Ukraine Foundation.

Tickets can be purchased at Grace Restaurant (215 Dundas St, London, 226 667 4822) or by contacting foh@gracelondon.ca. Please join us in celebrating Ukraine!