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Penn Kemp, the former poet laureate of London, Ontario, joins Joe and Mark to discuss collaboration and poetry.

They start with Penn’s roots in visual arts – her father was the well-regarded London painter Jim Kemp – and how it became poetry, not painting, that sparked her muse.

Though it’s often seen as a solitary activity, Penn has discovered the joy of collaborating with other poets who are also friends.

She worked with Harold Rhenish first, and then moved onto a project called P.S., with Sharon Thesen, published by Gap Riot Press.

The collection is a conversation, taken from letters they wrote one another over the course of a year.

Penn is a sound poet and Thesen is a “black mountain” poet, sometimes called projectivist poets. She goes on to read a sample of Thesen’s work and her own, so the listeners can get a sense of how the different poetry sounds.

Penn, Joe and Mark then get into a fascinating discussion about poetry, song lyrics, Leonard Cohen, Shakespeare and performance.