The Pageant by Penn Kemp

by Steven McCabe

a. penn text water

On the Moon after Solstice
you dream of hiking contours
to cathedral carol service.

b. transcendental
Singing in the cavern of nave,
omphalos to the world, you curve
on rounded meridian of joy to outer
space, linking with others of like mind.

O.dance of the red skirtsP. oval
You race to catch the authors
to know the next act.  Old tales
are told and tell themselves new.

d. stones in a bowl
You connect fragments, dropping
your lines, dropping me a line
in the cheer of retrieval.

e. darkly

1.double page chapbook imageg. three days
Rings of companions collaborate,
not wanting to recapitulate
events of the day merely or
invent night’s happenstance.

golden huecandlelight
Something’s given, something
larger than the single self.
Presently you’ll know the story
as it is happening to you.

the soilold carnival
Singly or together our dreams
direct us, as if night-given leads
to true script.  What is real
agitates dream into action.

q. altered mss

shift

Penn Kemp is London, Ontario’s inaugural Poet Laureate.

l. abstract ex.

In 2012, Penn Kemp and I published the chapbook Dream Sequins with Lyricalmyrical Press in Toronto. The title refers to Penn’s poetry manuscript. My contribution consisted of 18 ink drawings. I sent Penn a number of scans which I thought related or tangentially connected to her words and she made the final selection. Drawing can be an automatic process, as spontaneous as dreaming, with line unfolding connections not crafted by the conscious mind. My body of drawings 2009 – 2011 expressed a number of intertwined themes & at a certain point Penn and I connected. We were independently working in close enough proximity to our ‘source’ materials that text & image, both floating on a warm parchment paper, felt synonymous. This post was inspired by the idea of using Penn’s words as a design element in constructing digital images while referencing one poem & drawing from the chapbook.