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.

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...

CBC Books included me in its list of 34 books for the fall! www.cbc.ca/books/34-wor...

I read poetry as if it's out to get me.

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.

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.

Not being punished for your idiosyncrasies is a form of privilege.

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.

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.

I have eaten the cheese that was in the fridge and which you were definitely saving for breakfast suck it Trebek

Poetry is craft. But not the coloured macaroni on construction paper kind.

I didn't eat the plums in the icebox. I ate all the cheese and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Well, AI is good for something.

It's National Pet Day! So a poem to my cat, with a title almost as long as the poem: EVERY WRITER SHOULD HAVE A CAT AND WRITE AT LEAST ONE THING ABOUT IT SO HERE'S MINE My cat is so playful and rambunctious he often draws my blood. I suppose that makes him a poet too.

Little part of a long sequence.

I can say with absolute certainty that I am the only in person in history who has ever dreamt of bags of branded Denis Diderot peat moss. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_D...

I've got an idea for a dish that prevents heartburn. It's called Pesto-Bismol. (What?)

My buddy said it best. The US senate was based on the Roman senate. It's the Ides of March. You do the math.

A POEM feelings feelings moon feelings petrichor feelings trees feelings kintsugi murder of crows feelings

When I was a kid I had the Ramones blaring and laughed at the tastes of my parents. Now I get the attraction of the Doobie Brothers. #FML

This scrum of pot-bellied, sunken-chested betas trying to bully an all-black clad badass Eastern European wasteland survivor while dressed like Men’s Wearhouse mannequins is peak cinema.

By Ronna Bloom.

Developed by my friend Wil McReynolds, unsung genius of Canadian tech.

My relationship with poetry? We love each other dearly, and have many arguments, then find ourselves waltzing in the kitchen to hurtin' songs on the Victrola.

Musical hive mind: I've always thought the term "woodshedding" was negative, referring to over-practicing -- that is, practicing so much and so hard you get diminished returns. But I find online that it seems to mean simply givin' 'er when practicing. Which is it?

A toast! Poets, here's to your holiday scribing / scribbling / scrabbling / scrambling! May your families be just bad enough to provide you with good material!

Art Hive Mind. I need paintings with an Andrea Kowch kind of vibe, but from the male perspective. Enigmatic high street hippies, but young men, as opposed to young Tilda Swinton. Ideas?

Family holiday angst. Oh, the weather inside is frightful... (From my chapbook, How to Be Human, Bywords.ca).

Culture consists of all those things we most take for granted.

Embarrassing admission of the day: Rilke doesn't do it for me.

Is it too early to put Bailey's in my morning coffee? Early in the season I mean.

Everything I need to know about throwing a party I learned from Joan Crawford. Follow this to the letter.

There's a Victoria Chang poem for every situation.

Charles Simic with some gold.

See— there, in the nighttime sky, the rock a poet should never name is imbued with human feelings. It shines as if it knew. It knows not a thing. But its light is as warm as your father’s good intentions when he asks you why you always come in second.

Hello? I'm here. Where is everybody?