| 00:03 |
Intro Music: |
[Instrumental Overlapped With Feminine Voice] Can you hear me? I don't know how much projection to do.
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| 00:18 |
Hannah McGregor: |
What does literature sound like? What stories will be here if we listen to the archive? Welcome to the SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories about how literature sounds. [Music Fades] My name is Hannah McGregor, and each month I'll be bringing you different stories of Canadian literary history, and our contemporary responses to it, created by scholars, poets, students, and artists from across Canada. How often do you think of your own voice as sonic art? What happens when you speak poetry aloud? What effects can voices in the air produce? For sound poet Penn Kemp, poetry is something more than the written word — words must be lifted off the page into the air and sculpted in sound. Her voice is her poetic instrument and sound becomes a verb — the transporting and trance-forming act of "sounding". In this episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast, Penn weaves us through her creative practice with SpokenWeb researcher Nick Beauchesne. Exploring the magical effects of literary sound to transport us, transform us and entrance us, Penn and Nick take us on a journey through Penn's illustrious decades-long career discussing archival performances of Tranceform (1977), When the Heart Parts (2007), and Barbaric Cultural Practice (2017), plus two brand new poems from Penn Kemp shared in this episode. Penn Kemp has published 30 books of poetry and drama, and had six plays, 10 CDs, and several award-winning video poems produced. A former poet Laureate of London, Ontario, and League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Artist of the Year, Penn has been giving creativity workshops, teaching, and performing her poetry since 1966. Here is Nick Beauchesne with honored guest Penn Kemp in episode three of The SpokenWeb Podcast: Stories of Trance Formation. [Theme Music]
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| 02:29 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Good day, audio lovers. Welcome to a very special episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast. My name is Nick Beauchesne, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta department of English and Film studies and a research assistant on the SpokenWeb Edmonton team. Today we'll have an interview with a very distinguished Canadian sound poet in Penn Kemp. For Penn Kemp poetry is magic made manifest. While her subjects are varied and her interests and approaches have evolved over the years, Kemp has always understood the power of spoken word to evoke emotion, shift consciousness, and shape the world. Drawing on a syncretic blend of spiritual philosophy, informed by Buddhist, Hindu, and Celtic wisdom traditions, Kemp's work is imminent and transcendent, embodied and cerebral. The words on the page produce certain effects while the voices in the air produce others altogether. How do these effects complement and contradict one another? How does literary sound produce bodily effects and altered states of consciousness? Where will the trance take us as listeners? Thank you very much for joining us, Penn. How are you today?
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| 03:45 |
Penn Kemp: |
It's a pleasure to be here. I'm well and happy to join you.
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| 03:49 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, I'm broadcasting here from Kamloops, British Columbia, and here you are in London, Ontario coming together over Zoom in these very strange pandemic times.
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| 04:00 |
Penn Kemp: |
It's true. It's a lovely September day here full of long light approaching Equinox, a balance time.
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| 04:08 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
The world has seemed so out of balance in many ways. So perhaps we can look forward to that as some sort of omen.
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| 04:15 |
Penn Kemp: |
It's the seasonal transition from summer to fall. And the Celtic new year is coming up.
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| 04:23 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, we'll get into these topics as we go, because a lot of what drew me to your work was your involvement with the mystical, the magical to some extent the alchemical — although it seems you've moved away from that in recent years — but you still have that very strong, magical thread that works through all your work and the way that you use sound as a tool for change and for expanding consciousness. Your website lists you as a performance poet, activist and playwright. And you have a reputation as one of Canada's foremost sound poets. What does that category of “sound poet” mean to you?
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| 05:00 |
Penn Kemp: |
It means that I can do anything I like in performing a piece and how it wants to lift off the page.
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| 05:11 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, what do you mean by “lift off the page”?
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| 05:14 |
Penn Kemp: |
Into sound, into performance. So, basically, I separate the written word into various categories and if the sound is predominant in the poem, in the original poem, then I lift it into a chant or various ways of expressing it beyond English language.
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| 05:46 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, is it that ability to, to get beyond language that, do you find that that's what distinguishes your sound poetry from, from other types of poetry —which all do have a component of sound built into it —but how and why do you emphasize sound? What is it about sound that so draws you?
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| 06:03 |
Penn Kemp: |
Sound is both the first and the last sense. [Low chant begins, steadily increasing in volume] Hearing, as we know in the dead, in the dying, is the last sense to disappear. And it's the sound that we —it's sound that we first hear in our mother's womb. McLuhan once said something that the Catholic religion lost its sense of mystery when they moved from the Latin in resounding through the cathedral, through the natural sounds of the cathedral. And when that was replaced by a microphone, it lost the resonance. It lost being inside the cavity of the mother's womb, where sound is transmitted through the permeable membrane of the stomach. [Low chant ends] And so, I really believe that sound is transporting. It takes you back to primeval experience to first— before —it's the closest we get to a kind of synesthesia where before sound before, excuse me, the senses are divided into five or 5,000. I think sound is the basic basis of all that.
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| 07:38 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
That's such a fascinating connection there between the mother's womb and the womb of the cathedral space. Before we get into looking at some specific pieces of your work, I did want to kind of ask about that role of place. And it seems like you naturally tied into that in terms of, you know, since sound is so important for you, what are some of the coolest places you've been and hearing your voice in a raw environment and the different ways that that sound kind of affects it?
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| 08:06 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yes, I was —as I was talking about the cathedral, I remember performing in the '80s at the cathedral of St. John the Divine along with a hundred conches that were led by Charlie Morrow. And that was a very interesting way of the voice resonating with the cathedral. And I've also done a lot of sounding in the center of standing stones in Scotland and Exmoor. And at the temple of Asclepius in Greece, you stand at the center in the hollow of that temple and the sound reverberates. You can whisper and the sound reaches the outer limits of the amphitheater. But the most amazing place to sound was being in the third pyramids at Giza. I was sat there for a night in absolute darkness, so dark that my mind started to create visual images and oral images. [low chanting begins] And I spent the night sounding. But there's just another story. I was also invited to lie down in the sarcophagus at the King's chamber at Giza — first in Cheops' pyramid. And I had a very expensive Sony recorder at the time, and I was recording myself chanting in that sarcophagus. And when I came out, the recorder had blown a gasket. All the batteries had exploded with the energy. [Sound, ends]
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| 09:57 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Ooooooh.
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| 10:01 |
Penn Kemp: |
It was a very expensive lesson in power.
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| 10:05 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
What an amazing location to be able to experiment with sound. And then it's such a strange phenomenon to have your piece of technology just disintegrate like that. Perhaps that sound was too sacred for this world, Penn.
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| 10:21 |
Penn Kemp: |
I think so. Well, it is very interesting to have a kind of — my way of perceiving the world is, is very Celtic, very old, ancient, and yet to work with technology in a way that acknowledges its power is, has been a very interesting journey for me.
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| 10:43 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
This podcast will proceed with basically a conversation built around four clips that I selected. I enjoy these clips because they give the listener a broad selection of material from across your lengthy career, beginning with an excerpt from “Bone Poems” which was published in Trance Form. And that recording took place in 1977. I also have clips from When the Heart Parts, two clips from the year 2007, and then the final clip we'll be playing is from Night Orchestra in 2017. So, it's something quite recent. And once our conversation around these pieces of sound has been completed, we'll conclude the podcast with a special reading live by Penn Kemp from two new poems from your collection of pandemic poems. So, looking forward to getting to that material. The first excerpt I'll play is from “Bone Poems” which is part of Trance Form. [Ambient Music starts] This clip was recorded at the U of A, from the department of English and Film Studies on February 18th, 1977. And this was how I was first exposed to your work, being a research assistant. It was my job to do a close listening of all this raw material and to then try to identify poem titles, collect timestamps, and all that. And so, over the course of listening to maybe 50 of these tapes from the EFS collection at U of A, I heard all sorts of different clips, and I'm always listening for components featuring mysticism, the supernatural, magic as poetic themes. And I identified that immediately in your work. And it's something we've kind of talked about in our kind of private conversations. So, after kind of hearing this and then doing a listening practice back in June, where you joined as our guest, we put together this podcast where I wanted to pursue that strand of sound as a form of magical practice, as well as poetic practice. I'm going to play this clip. It's about six minutes long. It'll kind of form the — a good backbone (poem) of the rest of the interview. So, we'll just listen to this clip and we'll return with some questions. [Ambient Music ends.]
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| 12:59 |
Audio Recording,
Bone Poems, 1977: |
Ahhhhhhhhh. Oracle. The last section we can do together. This —my voice is running out and I'm sure you've got [Cough] a cough. It's “Bone Poems.” It's like getting down to the — it's the last bone we wear that covers our essential emptiness. All you have to do is say, chant: “bone poems.” For those of you with books, you can follow the “bone poem” line along on page. For those of you who don't have books, you can say “bonepoembonepoembonepoem.” And we'll start at that. And then I'll read the the “Bone Poems” supposedly over top of your loud “bonepoembonepoem.” You're the bass section. Can I hear you please? Bonepoembonepoem.... [Audience chanting] If you want to get into varieties, you can. There's quite a few. [Cough] Bonepoembonepoem. [Water pouring] You've died out. You have to keep it going for the next 10 pages. [Audience laughs] All right. Take a deep breath and then go. [Inhale] Hmmmmmmmm. [Audience chanting begins]
Skin. A breeze. Hmmmmmmm. Green. Saw. Blue.
Words. Breathe. Shed their skin. Skin to bone.
One bone under. Sun shine, some sun, some,
some sunshine, some shine. Hmmmmmmm.
Hmmmmmmm. Sa-sa-sa-hum-sa.
One bone sunshine shed skin. One bone over,
one bone under. Sun shine. Over under, over under,
over under. Some. Cloud. Bone be nimble. Bone be
quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Bone
be quick. Bone be quick. Bone be quick. Bone be
over, under, over, under, over under. Bone be nimble,
bone be quick. Do. These. Bones. Live? Bone be quick,
bone be quick. Jump over. Quick dry, quick dry, quick
dry quick, these be quick, bone be quick, bone be quick,
quick, quick, quick, quick. Bone be nimble, bone be quick.
[Audience chanting ending]. Music to my ears! [Audience: “ it's hard work!”] |
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| 16:39 |
Audio Recording,
Bone Poems, 1977: |
Anybody want a glass of water? [Audience chanting returns]
Sweet marrow sweet morrow, all fleshes as grasses as
grasses as whistling down wind, is whistling down wind.
Bare. Root. White. Grow. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Bare. Rock.
Bone. Root. Of fleshes as grass is as grass grows over, grows
under. These. Those. These. Bare. Bone. Grope. White. Flesh
is as grass is. Sweet morrow, sweet marrow. Cell in skull, skull
in cell. Desert father’s memento mori. Bone shards endure
when soft flesh withers. Slower bone retains our image. As
by jaw or femur, they determined what we were. What we
become. Our final trance formation. Slow. Bone. Soft flesh.
To marrow, tomorrow. Conjure our story. Become the thing
we divine.
Come on, don't get tired! I've been reading for an hour. You can't be tired!
Frame us erect. Base, bed, rock, mountain, tree. Axis
of our bloodline, pole on which was strung and hung
our nine-day lives. Oh spine, oh sacred virtue spreads
her branches as our limbs. Her white, our white. Play us,
we are your instrument. Tibia, flute, femur, during, enduring.
[string of high pitched sounds]
Hold the femur by its polished leather knuckle. Clang! Clang-inggggggg. Dangling. [Audience chanting ending] |
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| 19:16 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Wow. That was quite something there. Kind of a blast from the past for you, Penn.
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| 19:22 |
Penn Kemp: |
That's for sure. It's interesting how I have continued to use certain techniques or habits of speech or habits of sounding like the rising 'ing'. I've done a lot of that, of playing with the varieties of sound that can be produced.
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| 19:46 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
That's one of the things that really drew me to your work is there's not a lot of singing in the EFS collection of the SpokenWeb tapes. So that was one of the, well, it was certainly the first, occasion of singing I heard in the collection, although there is another one or there's another few of them out there. But not something that I've heard a lot of in our collection, anyways. So, it's something that immediately got my attention, you know, being a vocalist and performance artist myself. I just wanted to ask about just that that pun of transform, you know, not with the Tran “N S” but with the, the “C E” of a kind of pond on forming a trance. And, you know, we can hear all sorts of, you can hear the, you know, the crowd gasping for air and, and laughing. And just also the way that the chanting is kind of known to change the brain state, you know, to like a delta or gamma brain state. So just the way that, that sound and chanting, not only like the sound itself, but also through like the breath, the breathwork, as well as a kind of tool of consciousness transformation. So, yeah, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that in terms of how you use sound, both not only in your own, but also in the kind of audience participation or interaction forming that trance.
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| 21:06 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yeah. I believe that a poem must be transporting or at its best is transporting you to, not — certainly to an altered state, not a higher state, but a more spacious state of consciousness, where there are more possibilities. For example, we know that a baby [vocal drone begins] by the time it's a year old has made every sound that it's possible for a human being to make. But then by the age of 10, the child has — the child's mouth has condensed, hardened. So that say the African —some click language can't be, can't be pronounced properly after a certain age. So, as a person fascinated by travel and languages, I was really interested in reaching beyond English, which is such a lovely mongrel language of many sounds, but into, you know, the more guttural sounds of German, for example, or how, how language is placed in the mouth. The way French has right at the top of the lips, right at the front. And that — or Russian is way back in the throat. That sort of thing really intrigued me. But it was basically listening to how my children at the —as infants developed language. And that's where the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What that's where the repetition came in of what in Buddhism or Hinduism we call “seed syllables.” And so, I was very interested as well in the power of seed syllables.
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| 22:56 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
And there's something powerful in the sense of the participation about sound poetry as well, because even you said, you know, “you can feel free to follow along if, and if you have no books, you can just go, bonepoebonepoembonepoem.”
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| 23:09 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yeah. Yes.
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| 23:09 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, it's —so even people who don't have the book or have never heard the poem before are able to participate in the village chant. So, so maybe we can call it.
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| 23:19 |
Penn Kemp: |
So, it becomes a participatory — all my sound poetry is participatory because then the experience is reenacted in the audience’s body as a collective. And that's a joyous thing to get beyond the mind, the ego, into an experience that is so spacious.
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| 23:45 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
They got into that in the “bone poem” section, but I wish a few of them were more adventurous to try some of those variations to, to hear more [trill sound].
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| 23:56 |
Penn Kemp: |
If I had a little more time to do a sound workshop with them.
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| 23:59 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Yes. Yes.
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| 23:59 |
Penn Kemp: |
But I think Doug Barbour had invited me to do that reading and he very kindly had the kids, students buy the books. So, they had these — the cover is of a bare-breasted, beautiful woman caught in a slant light in a very bright yellow cover. And here they were turning the pages. And at the end they corrected me and asked why I had changed the words in “Bone Poem” because they were following it exactly. And I —I was everything I do is ad lib and improvised and I wasn't synchronized to what the page was saying. So, they felt it necessary to correct me.
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| 24:47 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
To inform you that you read your own poem incorrectly.
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| 24:51 |
Penn Kemp: |
Wrong!
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| 24:54 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, if the students commented on where the poem is going and how it should be delivered...Penn, where do poems come from?
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| 25:03 |
Penn Kemp: |
Well, they have many choices, but for me, the most powerful poems come from sound. But I also write a lot from a translation or a transliteration from visual fields. So, I dream vividly. And for example, after you had sent me the possibility of the podcast, I dreamt, I wrote a poem about that dream. And for me, the dream poems that are astonishing. I've got a whole collection called Dream Sequins, but they're not as powerful as poems that lead me on the way through sound. So, I like poems to lead me, to take me to places rather than translating images that already exist. But let me read you this poem and it's dedicated to you and you can make up your own mind.
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| 26:11 |
Penn Kemp: |
Literalizing the metaphor
For Nix Nihil
The host asks me to do a Zoom podcast, live in BC. I’m to record
on a cloud some metres above ground. The ladder up to the cloud
seems precarious, even with gold underlining and heavenly chords.
I’m afraid of falling through watery vapour, afraid of heights, afraid
that my voice will be tremulous. But once embarked upon the cloud,
the local Indigenous elder teaches me her healing heartbeat chant,
“la-Doe, la-Doe”. She repeats the resounding phrase as I join in.
So the recording goes well. As BC is my last stop on tour, I have
run out of books to sell. A shame, since audiences here buy more
than anywhere else. My host gladly accepts my last copy as a gift.
I return to home ground, empty of baggage and replete, complete,
and ready to begin again, earthed.
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| 27:27 |
Penn Kemp: |
Now, if I were developing that poem as a sound poem, I would be playing with "replete, complete, and ready to begin again. Earthed." I would be playing with "I'm afraid of falling throooooooough." Wherever the sound takes me. I would play further.
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| 27:47 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
I can also imagine some lah-dot, lah-dot, lah, dot persisting in the background. [Sound: Echo of “lah-dot”]
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| 27:52 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yeah! Well, for sure.
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| 27:54 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Well I don't know what else to say, but “aww shucks!”
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| 28:00 |
Penn Kemp: |
Oh, I expect the sound poem in return.
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| 28:02 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Well, I'll have to return the favor. No doubt. The next audio clip that I'd like to play is from a sound opera composed in 2007, called When the Heart Parts. Written in honor of your departing father, Jim Kemp.
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| 28:24 |
Audio Recording,
When the Heart Parts: |
When the heart parts. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wha-wha-wha-why? why? why? [interspersed sounds] When. When. When. When. When. When the heart. When the heart. When the heart. Hearts, heart, heart, heart, heart, heart, parts, heart, parts, when the heart parts company, heart parts company company, our heart stops. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh- when the company, when the company, when the company parts, when the company parts. Art. Stops. Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-when the company parts. When the company parts. When the company parts. When the company parts from the hearth. When the company parts from the hearth. Company from the hearth. The heart does not stop.
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| 29:29 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
That was a clip from When the Heart Parts. That was the first minute of the sound opera. Quite a lot of layers, quite a lot of voices. What's going on in that opening clip?
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| 29:42 |
Penn Kemp: |
Well, I'm trying to recreate the experience of driving through snow with the knowledge that I was going to witness my father's dying. And coming into the hospital, to the room, hearing all the different electronic sounds that were so pervasive, trying to keep him alive. And my voice is asking, "Why? Why? Why? Why?” You know. And so, I was trying to express the immensity of all the emotions through sound.
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| 30:30 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, there's the sound - The sound of like the male voice is doing like a "lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub." So, is that like the heart? The heart sounds there?
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| 30:37 |
Penn Kemp: |
That's John Magyar the producer. And then, Ann Anglin, the actor is performing with me the various machine sounds and the sounds of "why" taking the form of my voice and my mother's voice as we're in the room.
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| 30:57 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
And when you were saying, "company" —I just heard this now. And I don't know if I, if this was intentional, but— were you attending to say Penny, like your, your name is a child?
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| 31:07 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yes. Yep.
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| 31:07 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, “come, Penny.” So, younger Penny in there as well. And, just like the, not with sound poetry in general, but with you as well, the importance of homonyms, homophones, and puns. So, you go from heart, you know, the organ to a hearth, like a space in a home, to art, like the art that comes from the heart and then parting and leaving. So, you have all these related sounds and these kinds of concepts, in a stream of consciousness, kind of interwoven in there —
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| 31:37 |
Penn Kemp: |
I'm trying to get whatever works to get below the mental process into a deeper experience of the sound of language. And that comes again from a love of different languages.
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| 31:54 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
The next clip takes place about 17 minutes into the opera, which is about 45 minutes or so long. It's about two-and-a-half minutes long, but it really dramatizes that magical power of sound and that instinctive supra, or maybe sub rational power of sound that it goes beyond mind and into direct connection and intuition. So, it was a very powerful moment where you almost succeed in resurrecting your father, just for a moment too, to have this final kind of moment of connection. And so, it struck me as a very powerful moment in the poem, not only in the message and the words, but also the way that you self-consciously use sound to try to connect with your father while he's deep in his kind of sleep state. Here's a clip of the sonic resurrection.
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| 32:45 |
Audio Recording,
When the Heart Parts: |
In love and ceremony [Bells Ring] he crowns Mom with a Tibetan headdress. Magenta. Magnificent. Something significant has been accomplished. When Jamie and I come home from supper, Penny stays to read Jim the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He asked her to, ages ago, if he were ever...When she gets home, we know something has happened. I never saw anyone look so worn out. She has worked so hard doing something.
My commitment to Dad is to read him the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The old words are meant to appease the fear and confusion of the dying.
Do not let your attention wander. Keep to the clear light. Do not be distracted by other noises or pictures. They are all projections of your mind. Keep to what is happening here. Now, do not let your attention wander. Keep to the clear light. Do not be distracted. Traditionally, this reading is a guide in the process of dying. Do not be distracted. Keep to the clear light. The ear is the last sense to go. But who knows if Dad is listening? They are all projections of your mind. To conjure these peaceable realms, pure lands, at least calms and clears by own anguish. It is true. You are dying. It is true. You are dying. We are not pretending anything else. We are not pretending anything else. We are not holding anything back from you. We know you can hear. Your family is gathered around you. Know this is happening to you, now. To the light. Keep to the light. I whisper close into Dad's left ear because I hope his right brain might be more receptive. Remembering a super learning technique to reach the deepest typological level of the mind. I call his name in three tones of voice. In between each phrase, I pause to the count of four. Jim Kemp [Tapping] Jim Kemp, Jim Kemp. And then my father flutters his eyes, startled. Squeezes my hand tight. He tries to focus, stares, and sees me. |
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| 35:20 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, a very powerful moment there. And earlier in the clip you say, "in love and ceremony, he crowns my Mom with a Tibetan headdress." And it seems significant in a kind of a meta level, in a sense, that through the poem you in turn are "through love and ceremony" crowning your own father. So, what about this poem is ceremonial to you, or how is this poem a ceremony?
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| 35:44 |
Penn Kemp: |
Well, dying is such a time of transition. It's the opposite of our two great transitions, birth and death. So, for me, yes, it's important to honor these transitions through ritual. Dad and I were both received — took initiation as Buddhists in 1974. And so, we had studied Tibetan Buddhism and The Book of the Dead. And I had offered to read him The Book of the Dead when he was dying. So, this was a prepared act. My Mom was not part of that. She was much more of a rationalist. So, the dream was such a welcoming of her into the ceremony, which at the point of his dying, she embraced. The moment that I read his name and he came to, it was just before the doctors were to pull the plug, which would mean that he would die, of course. And because he was being kept alive by these instruments. And it meant that he then lingered on [Musical tones begin] for 10 more days. I don't know whether that was a good thing or not because they'd brought him back six times with pounding his heart and all that. So, it was very painful, but nonetheless, he was there. But when I read to him and when I said his name —.
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| 37:31 |
Audio Recording,
When the Heart Parts: |
Jim Kemp. |
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| 37:31 |
Penn Kemp: |
— he responded by not only opening his eyes for the first time —.
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| 37:36 |
Audio Recording,
When the Heart Parts: |
Jim Kemp. |
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| 37:36 |
Penn Kemp: |
— but lifting his hand, his index finger —.
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| 37:40 |
Audio Recording,
When the Heart Parts: |
Jim Kemp. |
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| 37:40 |
Penn Kemp: |
— on his right hand as a gesture of —.
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| 37:45 |
Audio Recording,
When the Heart Parts: |
Jim Kemp. |
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| 37:45 |
Penn Kemp: |
— I don't know, admonition or instruction. I never have been able to figure that one out. But extraordinarily powerful.
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| 37:56 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
And from your subjective position there, it must have certainly seemed almost like a, like a spell to wake the sleeper for a final farewell.
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| 38:06 |
Penn Kemp: |
Absolutely.
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| 38:08 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So just to call attention to, again, the idea of sound as a kind of magical technique, but also as a scientific technique as well: “I whisper close into my Dad's left ear because I hope his right brain might be more receptive, remembering a super learning technique to reach the deepest hypnagogic level of the mind I call his name —.
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| 38:27 |
Audio Recording,
When the Heart Parts: |
Jim Kemp. |
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| 38:27 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
— in three tones of voice." So how old were you when that happened? And did you know that technique at the time? Have you used that since in your poetry?
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| 38:36 |
Penn Kemp: |
I was 39. It was 1983. And super learning was, there was a book called Superlearning that I think the Russians had developed these —I haven't heard much about it since, so — I think the technique was so powerful that I've never used it again. I didn't dare.
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| 38:59 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Yeah. Sometimes those maybe when something like that happens that's so powerful once is enough.
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| 39:08 |
Penn Kemp: |
Thank you, Nick, for noticing that moment, because it's, for me, the pivotal moment of the piece. It was also produced by Theatre Passe Muraille as a play: What the Ear Hears Last. Appropriately enough. And you're the first person that has, aside from the actors, noticed that absolutely pivotal moment of transition.
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| 39:38 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, we'll go to another night, maybe not necessarily a night of the soul, but “Night Orchestra” is the next clip. So, this is from 2017 from your Barbaric Cultural Practices. Maybe, before I play it, can you explain what this clip is doing?
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| 39:57 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yes. Again, I'm in the midst of an aural field. This time, it's a hot summer's night in the Toronto beaches. And I have my windows open because I don't have air conditioning, but the flat next door has very loud air conditioning. And so, I make a sound poem out of the experience.
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| 40:25 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
And that experience was “Night Orchestra”.
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| 40:29 |
Audio Recording,
Night Orchestra: |
Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, beep,
deep, deep, deep in, deep in, deep in.
Deep in summer stillnessan electric hum of air conditioner in B flat.
Still hum, still hum. Flat. Flat.
Monotone entrains my body. Monotonous. [Low chant]
produced to cool my neighbors thrums the outside air,
heats up our collective night. Sleepless in the beaches,
I resist the single roar — sleepless, sleepless, sleepless —
as Blake deplores single vision. And Newton’s sleep.The sound of the perpetual 20th century colonized our
future with a dominant beep sales pitch for comfort. Con-
venience, reliance on the pliance. The pity is not that
the century has wound to a close, but that it's whining
on and on. Mechanical multitudes self-replicate in chorus.Relentless fridge and clock. The only spell-breaker is a tape
of Tibetan chant. [Tibetan chant] Deep harmonic overtones
conjure a resonance, disturb the soundwaves. Somewhere
beyond the pervasive rattle, waves break on the shore.
Species diversify. Night. Orchestra. |
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| 42:56 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Another hypnotic sound collage there. The line that really jumped out to me is, "The only spell-breaker is the sound of a Tibetan chant", which to me is almost ironic. The chanting in this track kind of constitutes part of the spell. I didn't really comment on the past track as well, which also had a low, deep Tibetan-sounding chant. [Tibetan Chant Begins] So, it seems that the, this Tibetan chant and this influence persists through your work and probably in other poems as well, that I haven't heard. [Tibetan Chant Ends] You mentioned you were initiated with your father. How else has this Tibetan chant kind of worked its way into your corpus?
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| 43:35 |
Penn Kemp: |
Well, specifically in this piece, the "deep deep, deep, deep" was the actual sound or my replication of the sound of the air conditioner from the neighbors. And as a sort of dueling banjo, I set up my own CD of Tibetan chants. So, it was very specific and very actual in that I was trying to go — it's like going onto an airplane and rising with the airplane, as it takes off. I convert the sound of the noise of the airplane into an 'ommmmm'. It's the same resonance. So, it converts the mechanical into the spiritual.
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| 44:23 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So, is that a technique you kind of frequently use in your everyday life whenever you hear obnoxious, ambient sounds? Is this an inner way in the inner monologue to overcode them with something of your own meaning to claim your head space, I guess?
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| 44:38 |
Penn Kemp: |
That's right. For example, the frog, there's a bull frog in my pond, and if he hears a certain truck, if he hears a certain sound of a large truck, he starts croaking, as in kind of setting up his territory, that this truck will not compete with. So, I think it's very —a basic technique from the animal kingdom up.
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| 45:09 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Yeah. Laying your claim —.
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| 45:10 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yep.
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| 45:10 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Staking your sonic territory.
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| 45:13 |
Penn Kemp: |
Yeah.
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| 45:17 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Thank you for commenting on some of these pieces that I selected. I did notice that sound as an instrument of will, and an instrument of change, an instrument of consciousness has persisted through your work for decades. So, I appreciate you joining me for this interview to comment on some of those strands and to help, you know, theorize about, you know, the bones of poetry and the transformational power of sound and how sound can form the trance and change the world. So, thank you very much. Before we end off, I understand you've written some new material to document your experience relating to this 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
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| 46:02 |
Penn Kemp: |
That's right.
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| 46:02 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
So why don't you —
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| 46:05 |
Penn Kemp: |
I'll read them for you.
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| 46:05 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
— why don't you talk about that?
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| 46:06 |
Penn Kemp: |
Well, first of all, I want to thank you Nick, for asking those very astute questions that helped me articulate the process because I usually work without conscious intent until I get to the editing phase. And you helped me articulate what I was doing at articulating the process. So, that's really fun and useful. [Musical tone begins] These two pandemic poems were published in the Free Press or London Free Press, and the first one was contemplating what we'll remember. It comes from the spring of this year. “What We'll Remember.” I think the only thing I'd like to say about it is that — I was saying earlier that poems for me come from either sound or a vision, a visual inspiration, and these two poems come from the visual field. Necessarily they include sound.
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| 47:17 |
Penn Kemp: |
What We’ll Remember
How first scylla sky shimmers
against the tundra swan’s flight
west and north, north north west.
How many are leaving the planet and yet
are with us, still and still forever.
How they linger,
the lost, the bewildered, the wild ones!
Though tears come easily these days,
we too hover over the greening land
as spring springs brighter than ever
since stacks are stilled and the pipe
lines piping down.
When the peace pipe is lit
and sweetgrass replaces
smog— when the fog of pollution
lifts and channels clear—
Earth take a long breath
and stretches over aeons to come
and aeons past. |
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| 48:29 |
Penn Kemp: |
The second poem came from a vision I had of, I call it, les revenants, those who have come before. Those spirits that seem to me to be brought back to a kind of half life from the influenza of 2000- excuse me - 1819. So this is a spell for them to return to their abode.
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| 49:05 |
Penn Kemp: |
No Reruns, No Returns
for les revenants
Those who died once from influenza
a century ago, who now are pulled to
a hell realm of eternal return—are you
repeating, reliving the hex of time as if
doomed to replicate the old story you
already lived through? Once is enough.
No need to hover. You have suffered
plenty. You’ve loved and lost all there
is to lose. You have won. You’re one
with all that is. Retreat now to your own
abode. Return home, spirits. You’re no
longer needed here. You are no longer.
Although we honour you and thank
you and remember you each and all,
all those who’ve been called back, called
up from dimensions we can only guess at—
caught in the Great War and carried away
or carried off in the aftermath of influenza—
by this spell, we tell you to go back to
your own time, out of time. Just in time.
May you depart. We don’t know, how can
we tell? where your home is. It’s not here.
Know this virus is not yours. Know this
war is not yours. You are here in our era
by error, by slippage, a rip. You’ve mis-
taken the signage, the spelling in wrong
turns. Now return, by this charm, retreat.
You are dispelled, dismissed, dismantled,
released to soar free from the trance of time.
May you travel well. May you fly free. |
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| 51:50 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
[Finger Snaps] There's my finger-snapping of appreciation.
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| 51:57 |
Penn Kemp: |
Well I couldn't hear it.
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| 51:58 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Thank you very much for sharing your new work with us here on the podcast.
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| 52:05 |
Penn Kemp: |
You're the first to hear it.
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| 52:05 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Oh, I'm honored. Thank you very much, Penn, for joining us. Thanks to SpokenWeb for allowing me the opportunity to do this podcast. Thanks also to my friend and former bandmate, Adam Whitaker-Wilson for providing the tech support and the studio gear and space on my end here. Anyone seeking to learn more about Penn — she has a blog. Just google Penn Kemp at WordPress, and she also has a Weebly page, W-E-E-B-L-Y for further information as well.
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| 52:39 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Spo-ken. Web. |
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| 52:39 |
Penn Kemp: |
Spoooooooo - |
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| 52:39 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
[Ambient Noise Begins]. Thanks. You. Audience. For. Your. Time. |
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| 52:39 |
Penn Kemp: |
Spo-ken. Spo-ken. |
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| 52:42 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Spo-ken. Web. Spo-ken. Web. Web of life web. |
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| 52:55 |
Penn Kemp: |
Web. Web. |
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| 52:55 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Web of time. |
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| 52:55 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
Spokennnn Webbbbb. |
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| 52:55 |
Nick Beauchesne: |
And then we'll “fade out: music.”
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| 53:14 |
Hannah McGregor: |
[Theme Music] SpokenWeb is a monthly podcast produced by the SpokenWeb team as part of distributing the audio collected from and created using Canadian literary archival recordings found at universities across Canada. Our producers this month are SpokenWeb team members, Nick Beauchesne from the University of Alberta with guest collaborator and Canadian poet Penn Kemp. Our podcast project manager and supervising producer is Stacey Copeland. Assistant producer and outreach manager is Judee Burr. A special thanks to Adam Whitaker-Wilson, Douglas Barbour, Ann Anglin, Bill Gilliam, and John Magyar for their contributions to this episode. To find out more about SpokenWeb visit spokenweb.ca and subscribe to the SpokenWeb Podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you may listen. If you love us, let us know. Rate us and leave a comment on Apple podcasts or say hi on our social media as @SpokenWebCanada. From all of us at SpokenWeb, be kind to yourself and one another out there. And we'll see you back here next month for another episode of the SpokenWeb Podcast: stories about how literature sounds. |
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