I suck at issues-oriented verse. I've written my share of it but it's always heavy-handed and obvious (I guess like a lot of what I write). I'm just some doofus who polishes sand grains while Lorca's blood spatters his assassin's shirt. But fuck it. Some poems just have to come out.
Barry Dempster, one of Canada's finest poets and a dear friend, whose departure has left me disconsolate. Those of you outside of Canada, please look him up. He's worth a deep dive.
I had a joke about Hades but I'll be damned if I can remember it.
I had a joke about Herakles but it was stupid.
I told a joke about Caesar but was rebuked sharply.
I had a joke about Icarus but it didn't go over well.
Oh my God could she write. Oh my God could she read.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY6i...
Today, a very dear friend and a titan of Canadian letters will transition from this life. Godspeed you, Barry, you will see Karen soon. We love you.
newly posted at @periodicities.bsky.social : Penn Kemp : For You, Dear Friend and Fellow Poet / @pw.org @nightwoodeditions.bsky.social ;
for Barry Dempster (January 17, 1952-November 27, 2025)
periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/11/penn...
I read poetry as if it's out to get me.
I have written extensively about how I gradually faded out of my son's life. It's bittersweet, because on the other hand I nonetheless get to watch him turn into a better person than I ever was...
With your kids, you must never take anything for granted!
Never been a fan of puffballs. The tofu of the mushroom world.
My poetry is a machine as complicated as a cedar shim, though I can't pretend it's as useful.
For me a poem begins with play and ends with work, and begins with intuition and ends with calculation. It comes into being with a spark, but a spark that catches not in some random pile of branches, but in a proper assembly of tinder and kindling, to which I add cured fuel logs.
So glad to share an issue with my friends!
Love these!!!
One of the greatest things to come out of T-Dot in the 80s... Immortal.
I bristle when art is called "content". I'm a mal-content, full of dis-content.
The dumber I become at day to day things, the wiser I become in things of the heart.
Love this show, and the adjacent comedy SMALL ACHIEVABLE GOALS, which brings slapstick into the equation.
Not being punished for your idiosyncrasies is a form of privilege.
My approach as well. I have a main writing place (sitting lengthways on the living room couch, notebook on lap, cat on feet, at 4 a.m.), but the dining room table has seen some good shit, and my father-in-law's ski cabin was The Fount of Creation. I can also edit in cafes. It's a charmed life.
So good it's humbling.
When I'm on my deathbed, I want to go out wearing a Star Trek red shirt that has "Red Shirt. Might not make it." on it.
Sometimes my poems are Kate Hepburn. Sometimes they're Clara Bow. I try for Gloria Swanson but often wind up with Tallulah Bankhead. Recently I've done a few Rita Hayworths, but I'm focusing on Gloria Grahames these days.
This poem is huge!
Be thou like the Weeble. For consider him: he wobbleth, yet falleth not down.
Contemplating the extreme roundness of my cat Banjo’s head. Actually, a little flattened on top, making it an oblate spheroid, kind of like the planet.
