Penn Kemp

Poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication of poetry (1972). The League of Canadian Poets has honored her with the Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award (2025), as Spoken Word Artist of the year (2015), a foremother of Canadian Poetry, and Life Member. Penn has long been a keen participant/activist in Canada’s cultural life, with more than thirty books of poetry, prose and drama; seven plays and ten CDs produced as well as award-winning videopoems. She received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond and Platinum Jubilee medals for service to arts and culture. 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 and Vernon BC’s Caetani Centre in 2018. She has been writer-in-residence at universities throughout India and Brazil with her work widely translated. Her “poem for peace in many voices”, for instance, is out in 136 languages. Her collaborations with artists are up on youtube and https://riverrevery.ca. Out now is POEMS IN RESPONSE TO PERIL, an anthology for Ukraine. Penn’s INCREMENTALLY, is up as e-book and album on hempressbooks.com/shop and https://angrystarlings.bandcamp.com/album/incrementally. New collections in 2025 are available on https://www.silverbowpublishing.com/ordinary-moving and https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/02/new-from-aboveground-press-lives-of.html. Copyscripts for her plays are on https://www.playwrightsguild.ca/playwright/penn-kemp. Since1972, 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. Penn is active across the web: www.pennkemp.weebly.com, www.pennkemp.wordpress.com and www.pennkemp.substack.com., https://x.com/pennkemp and www.facebook.com/pennkemppoet. Poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication of poetry (1972). The League of Canadian Poets has honored her with the Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award (2025), as Spoken Word Artist of the year (2015), a foremother of Canadian Poetry, and Life Member. Penn has long been a keen participant/activist in Canada’s cultural life, with over thirty books of poetry, prose and drama; seven plays and ten CDs produced as well as award-winning videopoems. She was London's inaugural Poet Laureate (2010-13) and Western University’s Writer-in-Residence (2009-10). Her project was the DVD, Luminous Entrance: A Sound Opera for Climate Change Action. She has been writer-in-residence at universities throughout India and Brazil with her work widely translated. Her “poem for peace in many voices”, for instance, is out in 136 languages. Her collaborations with artists are up on youtube and https://riverrevery.ca. Out now is POEMS IN RESPONSE TO PERIL, an anthology for Ukraine. Penn’s INCREMENTALLY, is up as e-book and album on https://www.hempressbooks.com/authors/penn-kemp. New collections in 2025 are available on https://www.silverbowpublishing.com/ordinary-moving and https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/02/new-from-aboveground-press-lives-of.html. Penn is active across the web: www.pennkemp.weebly.com, https://www.facebook.com/pennkemp/, www.pennkemp.wordpress.com and www.pennkemp.substack.com. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram (pennkemp), http://facebook.com.pennkemppoet. See https://soundcloud.com/penn-kemp and www.canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/kemp.