Penn Kemp

In 2021, Kemp was commissioned by Brescia University College to deliver their inaugural Women's Day Poem. During the university's fourth annual Dr. Colleen Hanycz Leadership Lecture, Kemp performed her poem "Choose to Challenge" as a riff on the theme, "Choose To Challenge: Finding Common Ground Through Dialogue."

In 2012, Kemp was awarded the League of Canadian Poets’ Life Membership Award. Kemp received a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2013 for her service to the arts. In 2015, the League of Canadian Poets awarded Kemp the Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award, which honoured her as a spoken-word poet.

She was London's inaugural Poet Laureate, serving from 2010 to 2013 and University of Western Ontario's Writer-in-Residence (2009-2010). Kemp runs Pendas Productions.

Kemp's left London, Ontario after graduating from Western University. She returned in 2001 and her mother had a stroke. She now lives in London and considers it her home. Her husband, Gavin Stairs, developed vascular dementia and died in fall 2021.

Kemp's first book, Bearing Down, was published by Coach House in 1972. In 1973, it was performed as a radio show for four voices in Seattle. In 1984, Kemp was writer in residence for Niagara Erie Writers in New York State; for the Labrador School Board in 1986; for Flesherton Library in 1988 and '89; and at SNDT Women's University in Mumbai in 1995. In 1994, Kemp's play, What the Ear Hears Last, was produced by Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto and, in the same year, she was featured on the CBC Radio show, "Sounding Off." In 1995 the Indian Institute of Canadian studies sponsored her tour of Mumbai colleges and universities.

She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and literature from the University of Western Ontario in 1966 and received certification as a teacher in 1968. In 1988 she received an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to complete a Masters of Education degree at the University of Toronto.

Patricia Penn Anne Kemp (born 1944), better known simply as Penn Kemp, is a Canadian poet, novelist, playwright, and sound poet who lives in London, Ontario. Kemp has been publishing her writing since 1972 and was London's first poet laureate, serving from 2010 to 2013.

Kemp was born on August 4, 1944 in Strathroy, Ontario to parents Anne Kemp and James "Jim" Kemp. She was raised in the nearby city of London. Her father was an advertising and publicity executive at London Life, painter, and war artist. Penn says she wrote her first poem when she was six years old.