Author Description

Perceptions from early childhood for Penn Kemp were best expressed in poetry as the senses are so acute then and the imagery intense. A child's perspective fascinate the poet as it is still original, unencumbered by expectation. Penn's life began during World War Two and carried on throughout the staid Fifties into those (in)famous Sixties. The London Ontario artistic scene when Penn grew up was an exciting foment of new ideas. Her father, an abstract painter, was very involved in the arts scene so the arts were her milieu. Adjusting to social mores at school was something else. Her poems present that trajectory: articulating the momentous shifts in consciousness that all those decades offered. Raising kids in the Seventies, then skipping on to her into her Seventies, while her grandchildren grow she stands back now to ponder the cycles, patterns of change: what remains and what goes. Penn Kemp, Life Member, League of Canadian Poets