ART IN ACTION: IN RESPONSE TO PERIL

"Penn Kemp has been once again moved to activism by recent political events. ART IN ACTION: IN RESPONSE presents an important chronology of her activism through poetry." Karen Close, editor,
https://www.sageing.ca/sageing53.html

From SAGE-ING with Creative Spirit, Grace & Gratitude, this article:

Art in action: that’s my motto. I believe in the power of poetry to move readers/listeners to participate in their community. In reacting to the tumult of 2025, I have expanded my activism from projects already completed to projects ongoing for decades. The demand for articulating protest is more imperious than ever in these bewildering, unfathomable times. So 2025 began for me with a poem in reaction to Trump’s inauguration, now up on https://thetypescript.com/auguries-of-this-inauguration-by-penn-kemp/.:

This Awful Inauguration Day

January 20, 2025

This Awful Inauguration Day augurs
dimly for most, and we are not even
in the United States. The world awaits

uncertain of outcome, certain only that
meanness prevails of heart and intent.
We’ve dropped into the well of offal.

An Awful Inauguration Day augurs well
for the unduly rich but poorly for poor
dispossessed and for poor middle class.

This Awful Inauguration Day augurs ill
for tariffs, for taxing the health of nations,
for all illegal aliens and alienated arts.

This Awful Inauguration Day augurs dimly
for us all, and we aren’t even in the Year
of the slippery Wood Snake till January 29.

This Awful Inauguration Day crows triumph
for the cock of the walk, king for a day, for
another four years. We withhold, withstand.

We don’t withdraw. We march, we hold
on, hold to truth as we know it. We refuse.
We are other. We are alien. And we protest.

”Art in action” is also the title of an anthology I edited in response to New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton’s untimely death in 2011: Jack Layton: Art in Action, http://quattrobooks.ca/books/jack-layton-art-in-action/. This collection of anecdotes features people’s experiences with and observations of Layton over the years. There are dozens of voices from across Canada in the book — poets, writers, musicians and artists of all stripes. The writings include poems, blog posts and eulogies.

Jack Layton: Art in Action (Quattro Books) describes Jack’s involvement in Canadian arts and culture, how his spirit continues to influence activism in Canada today. His interest in the Canadian cultural landscape was an underlying presence throughout his career. Art in Action encourages readers to be proactive and, as Jack would say, “Never turn down an opportunity to serve!” Jack Layton: Art in Action commemorates Jack Layton’s influence on Canadian arts and culture, encouraging readers to actively effect positive change.

I first met Jack in the early Eighties. As a young City Councillor, he was helping us Toronto Islanders defend our homes, houses which Metro wanted to demolish for parkland. The Islanders won that fight, in part due to his help. Later, when his younger sister, Nancy Layton, married my husband’s brother, Jack welcomed me into the family. He called me sister; I called him outlaw, because of such an extended relationship. We’d have long philosophical discussions about the role of the arts.

Jack surrounded himself with artists. I think he felt a similar spirit in the artistic type. He himself was very musical, with perfect pitch. He was wholeheartedly behind government funding for the arts. Without him, I know I wouldn’t have been so politically engaged. Jack made me into a performance activist.

The man I knew privately was the same man we knew publicly. I admired his integrity. He wouldn’t allow any of his party members to launch personal attacks (unlike the Conservative Party’s past and current strategy). He had a real sense of humour. He loved to laugh, even at himself. He was always up for a party, for dancing, for singing. He was forever curious, meeting people gladly. Almost everyone who met him said they felt special in his presence because he really learned to listen and would focus on you, no matter who you were. It didn’t matter to Jack if you were a cabinet minister or a cabinet maker.

When Jack died in August 2011, I wondered how to pay homage. Palimpsest Press contacted me within a week and asked me to write a whole book on his legacy. I preferred to invite contributors as a collective enterprise, in keeping with Jack’s vision of society. Allan Briesmaster, the consulting editor for Quattro Books, came aboard in June of 2012, when I talked to him about the work in process. Quattro was behind the project ever since. If it was excellent writing that said something new about Jack and his influence on Canadians, then it was in. The book was supposed to be 150 pages but the final outcome was double that; there was so much good material. Jack Layton: Art in Action is a truly inspiring cornucopia of anecdotes, reflections, poems, and images infused with Jack’s spirit, and with the spirits of many who were touched and motivated by his example. You’ll have to read the book for specific examples!

In this photo, Jack and I are performing my “Poem for Peace in Two Voices”, in English and French. My poem is another study in activism, having been translated into 136 languages and performed world-wide over thirty years.

Jack Layton and I recite “Poem for Peace in Two Voices”

The most recent election that has had me pondering what might have been. Now that we have a confirmed new Prime Minister in Mark Carney, I wonder what kind of PM Jack could have been. He would have maintained his ongoing zest for social justice. He would have been fair-minded, decisive and compassionate. He would have been beloved. His way of handling diplomacy or controversy or opposition was to be the consummate listener. He would treat every person on the level where they had something in common. Jack’s life was a work of art capable of igniting us into positive, caring action. He always had the whole picture in mind. Now, I would imagine, Jack wants for us all to bond together to get things done. He is an ongoing mentor to Canadians, on how to work, how to play, and how to act effectively to create change. How he has been missed!

It grieves me that so many of my poems are eulogies. In 2025, I have responded to loss with many laments. Their commonality is a sense of adventure in the face of the inevitable. My chapbook, Lives of Dead Poets, was published earlier this year: https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/.../penn-kemp-one.... These poems are dear to my heart as a paean to the lifelong contributions of some marvellous writers. I present the history behind Lives of Dead Poets on https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/.../penn-kemp-one....

Die Verse

As if. What matters. As if. What’s left.
As if. We have only our elegies. As if.

Even the need for elegy. As if remembering
and inventing—invenio —as if.

As I come upon. As I discover.
As if in passing through this vale.

As if memory’s world is
as if trudging up sludge,

As if the word that springs to
mind is devotion, as if, despite

the mess, life's unholy
business forever left

unfinished. Dead
poets, by your name

we shall know you,
by your work

Cover image of Lives of Dead Poets by James Kemp

Another brand new collection, Ordinary/Moving, print and e-book, is one more defense strategy of mine, an antidote to all the overwhelm we are daily experiencing in the news. Such perceptions are for me best expressed in poetry, a memoir in verse, The poems present a childhood begun during WW2, moving through the staid Fifties, and into the (in)famous Sixties… raising kids in the Seventies… and skipping ahead to my own Seventies, watching grandchildren. The poems articulate the momentous shifts in consciousness that these decades offered. The London Ontario artistic scene in which I grew up was an exciting foment of new ideas: art in action. My father, an abstract painter, was very involved, and so art was my milieu. Art was the means to articulate, sometimes to transcend difficult circumstances. As always, I respond to the dreadful by concentrating on beauty in art or in nature:

The duty of
such beauty
is just
to
bloom

The zoom launch for my new collection, Ordinary/Moving, is up now on

.

It can be ordered from your local bookstore or https://www.silverbowpublishing.com/ordinary-moving.html.

All this activism over the decades has been recently acknowledged, to my surprise and delight: see https://poets.ca/nvw2025/#life.To be the inaugural winner of the League's new Lifetime Achievement Award is a profound honour, given the wealth of senior poets across Canada. In accepting this award, I'd like to pay tribute to our elder poets, for whom this ongoing award is so pertinent. Throughout sixty years of writing and publishing, poetry has been my lifeline. But there is so much more to explore! At eighty, I feel at the beginning of all that poetry can offer...I still stare daily at the blank page until words unfurl.

Other Projects:

POEMS IN RESPONSE TO PERIL, an anthology for Ukraine. Edited by Richard-Yves Sitoski and me. We raised $3K for Ukrainian artists and recorded poems as well: https://www.rsitoski.com/poems-in-response-to-peril. It includes my poem,

, written for the National Poetry Month theme of “Intimacy”. In previous issues, Sage-ing has featured this anthology. Tragically, the war in Ukraine is ongoing.

Poem for Peace in Many Voices. You can see Rachel Thompson’s glorious video for the poem, with a reading by many translators in London ON:

.

Here's my poem for International Women's Day, #IWD: "Choose to Challenge",

Bio: Poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp has received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Canadian Poets. She has participated in Canadian cultural life for 60 years – writing, editing and publishing poetry, fiction and plays. Her first book of poetry, Bearing Down, was published by Coach House, 1972. She’s since published 30+ books of poetry, prose and drama, seven plays and 10 CDs of spoken word, and edited a number of anthologies by Canadian writers. Her work explores environmental and feminist concerns, though she is best known as a sound poet. Delighting in multimedia, poet and playwright Penn is active across the web. Two new collections, Lives of Dead Poets (https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/02/new-from-aboveground-press-lives-of.html) and Ordinary / Moving (https://www.silverbowpublishing.com/ordinary-moving. html) are out now. Updates: www.pennkemp.weebly.com, www.facebook.com/pennkemppoet and www.pennkemp.substack.com. Penn is delighted to celebrate this issue of Sage-ing: The Journal of Creative Aging.