The poem begins with figures of speech
or figures of fun, a fig newton, a figment
imagination flares on mind’s old screen.We find comfort in naming, cataloging,
pinning butterflies to walls that our own
mind designs, an habitual track to follow.My work is the translator’s, to move one
sense into another’s realm, to navigate
mists of borderland beyond boundary.One sense is felt in terms of another be-
fore the words slip into the familiar rut
of what has already been heard or seen.Extrasensory perception extends feelers
beyond the usual grasp of the known in
to whatever has not yet been figured out.Intrasensory perception reaches between
the possibilities, dipping toes in the water.
We live along a grand colour spectrum.Between infrared and ultraviolet falls all
our known worlds. Beyond lies shades
of inarticulate particle, particulate matterthat has not yet come into being, formed
like the jellyfish cell that chooses its own
destination, eye or trailing tentacle feeler.Figuratively speaking, in figure drawing.
Drawing out nuance, drawing on resource
not yet articulated. Drawn toward the new.
Penn Kemp [photo credit: Bryan Lavery] has participated in Canadian cultural life for more than sixty years— writing, editing, and publishing poetry, fiction, and plays. Her first book of poetry, Bearing Down, was published by Coach House, 1972, followed the next year by IS 14, the first anthology of women’s writing in Canada. The League of Canadian Poets honored Penn Kemp with their Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award (2025), as Spoken Word Artist of the year (2015), and as a foremother of Canadian Poetry. Recent poetry collections include: Ordinary / Moving (Silver Bow Publishing, 2025); Lives of Dead Poets ( in beloved above/ground press, 2025); INCREMENTALLY (Hem Press, 2024); POEMS IN RESPONSE TO PERIL, an anthology for Ukraine (co-editor, Pendas Productions, 2023); P.S. (with Sharon Thesen, Gap Riot Press, 2022).
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
