To write about Lives of Dead Poets is to go back fifty years to Toronto’s burgeoning poetry scene in the early 70s. Having moved with my husband to Toronto Island in 1971 and living there with two babies in diapers, I was writing in the wee hours… and hungry for community, for a poetry community. The Coach House Press had published my first book, Bearing Down, in 1972. The next year, I edited IS 14, the first anthology of women’s writing in Canada and part of Victor Coleman’s series at Coach House. But what next? When Victor asked me to host a new reading series at A Space Gallery on St. Nicholas Street, I jumped at the opportunity. The Canada Council at that time sponsored honoraria and travel costs for poets not only from across Canada but from the US. Imagine being able to invite poets you had long admired to come read in Toronto! What a joy for a keen novice! I learned to typeset flyers and posters for our monthly events, and to record many of the readings on reel-to-real tapes (now in my archives at McGill): both activities far beyond my technical grasp but I reached. Ward Island writers received the visiting poets with open arms; festive weekends for the guests ensued: party time! The poets often stayed with us en famille or with Victor or his mother. This poem describes one such visit by P. K. Page:
In the Fall
of 1973, P.K.
Page came to visit us on Toronto Island.
I'd
arranged for her to come and read then in
the poetry series I was organizing at A Space.
The weather
was blustery so the oil stove puffed
and popped away in the middle of our living room.
You have to
imagine this elderly cottage, without
much insulation, two little kids crawling underfoot.
P.K. was
dressed to the nines in a glamorous cape
and armloads of silver jewelry.
At the
stove's first growl, she leapt up and alighted
for the evening on the couch arm closest to the door.
An oil
stove had exploded on her before—she
was taking no chances.
But she
made that perch hers, crossing elegant legs,
gallantly discussing poetry and poets
until the last boat swept her away to the city.
Several of the poets I met at A SPACE became livelong friends: Daphne Marlatt, Phyllis Webb and P.K. Page. I kept in touch with Robert Creeley and Allan Ginsberg in person over the next decade, and by letter with Diane di Prima.
Lives of Dead Poets began in contemplation of the many poets I’ve known who have since died. That comes with being eighty years old, of course, and lucky to be here, given the necessary transience we all face. Gwen MacEwen’s death in 1987 was an early shock: at 46, she died far too young, it seemed to me. We first met at a reading in 1967 and bonded over a mutual love of Ancient Egypt through the next twenty years. When I had the occasion to travel to Cairo on a tour of the old sites, she warned me not to go, given her fear of the modern city. But of course I went… and then wrote about our conversations while she was alive, in my collection, Suite Ancient Egypt, a chapbook and sound opera (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=6zU21sg6_As ). “Not Waving But Drowning” describes a scene in which she turned up a reading at Harbourfront a day late and incoherent: I escorted her away, https://canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/kemp/audio.htm. The day she died, I called her several times as I was in the neighbourhood but there was no answer. After her death, I wrote about ongoing visitations in my M.Ed. thesis on creativity, 1988.
Bob Hogg was a much-loved poet whom I’d met briefly decades ago as part of the poetry scene in Vancouver; we caught up with one another a few years ago in Ottawa and corresponded: he wrote me just before he died, as the poem in the chapbook describes:
“What a gift you and your
poems and stories
are to us, your friends and
all Can Lit!”
The night
before you died, you
replied—
“it goes on even when we no longer do!”
The day before you
The day before
“you”
Daphne Marlatt kindly read this poem for Bob at his memorial reading in
Vancouver.
bp nichol and I knew each other in early Coach House days. Through underwhich
editions, he published a cassette of my sound poetry, recorded at The Music
Gallery and Glenn Gould Studio. He was about to publish a chapbook of mine
through his GrOnk Press. barrie called to postpone a reading we had scheduled
for September, 1988 at Flesherton ON Library, where I was writer-in-residence.
He died that weekend after the operation which we thought would be minor.
Again, the poem in the chapbook captures the poignancy of that time. barrie and
I were born a month apart. Similarly, Bronwen Wallace was about the same age:
she was supposed to read in the same series I was hosting (for Ontario poets,
this time), but illness and then her death intervened. I guess the moral is,
what? I’ll leave that to you, dear reader.
After hosting Daphne, Phyllis, Bob, Fred Wah, and George Bowering in the A Space series, the west coast poetry scene drew me to read there almost annually, often staying with Daphne or P.K. Aside from a dear friendship with Daphne over the last half century, Creeley has had the most influence on my poetry, not just in his writing but the intensity with which he lived… and recognized me as a poet. “Maintain!” he wrote, in a dedication. Our conversations would continue in Toronto or Bolinas or Buffalo from wherever they had last been paused. I never met Jack Spicer nor John Ashberry, but admired their poetry. And who could resist responding to such poetic last names?
Joe Blades and Joe Rosenblatt were very different presences in Canadian poetry, but my tributes connect them by name, for their love of poetry. It was deeply moving to read Ellen Jaffe this tribute to her via zoom as she lay dying in hospital. And to connect so tenderly with sweet Teva Harrison at www.wordsfest.ca in London Ontario, though she too knew she was dying. Poets with a London connection here include Robert Kroetsch and, of course, James Reaney. 2025 marks Jamie’s wife and fellow poet Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary, I’ll be reading the poems in the chapbook in celebration of her writing through www.wordsfest.ca later this year.
The cover paintings are by my father, London painter Jim Kemp. When he was laid up at home, I would bring him found objects of interest to paint, including this moth, a symbol of transience. His blue painting reminds me of waves, crashing on the shore: mutability.
It’s been a delight to work with publisher rob mclennan. How lucky to come of age in a milieu where poetry was celebrated and the publishing world was open to poetry, with so many indie presses on the scene! In retrospect, life seems like a series of hits and misses, and my literary life has been lucky so far. May the tributes in Lives of Dead Poets bring you joy in acknowledgement of these lives well lived in poetry.
Penn Kemp [photo credit: Michael Filippov] has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication (Coach House, 1972). Kemp has long participated in Canada’s cultural life, with 30+ books of poetry and prose; seven plays and multimedia galore in collaborations like www.riverrevery.ca. She was London, Ontario’s inaugural Poet Laureate, The League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Artist (2015) and Life Member, acclaimed “a foremother of Canadian poetry”. Recent poetry collaborations include Intent on Flowering (https://rosegardenpress.ca ); P.S., https://www.gapriotpress.com/shop/p/penn-kemp-sharon-thesen-p-s and her co-edited anthology for Ukraine, https://www.rsitoski.com/poems-in-response-to-peril. Penn’s latest collection of sound poetry, Incrementally, text and album, is on https://www.hempressbooks.com/authors/penn-kemp. Join her on https://www.instagram.com/pennkemp, https://pennkemp.substack.com, https://x.com/pennkemp and www.facebook.com/pennkemppoet. See also www.pennkemp.weebly.com and www.pennkemp.wordpress.com.
