Jake Kennedy
Biography
According to his 6-year-old neighbour, Jake Kennedy is a total bald guy. However, Jake started off with an average amount of hair in the SouthwesternOntarioarea around about the time when Neil Diamond and Bill Withers were vying for a Billboard number 1. Nowadays, Jake lives in Syilx territory and has worked—with pretty much constant delight—at Okanagan College for the last 15 years. Jake likes it when people tie a narrow band across two trees and then they spend all day trying to walk across the narrow band. He also likes it when Prince finishes his solo and chucks his guitar in the air and the guitar doesn’t come down. Jake is the author of three collections of poetry: The Lateral (Snare Books), Apollinaire’s Speech to the War Medic (Book*hug), and Merz Structure No. 2 Burnt by Children at Play (Book*hug). His most recent chapbook—published by Gaspereau Press—is The Rublev Horse.
Poetics Statement
“They say they don’t have time for beauty because, well, numbers and they say they don’t have time for others because, well, self and they say they don’t have time for dissent because, well, apps so it’s always been very hard to be except for the animals who know how to get up each day and do the stuff of being and poems too in their way seem to know how to be revelling in all that paradox and contradiction and ambiguity so I sometimes think the poem is an animal showing proper simple complicated being and imagine if you could help it begin to come-to-be then that’d be astounding but mostly over here in this place I just fail at such stewardship though I’ve got some kind of habit or appetite to keep on failing on and on and maybe it’s okay to aspire to other grander company to please or amuse or honour your gone-relatives to remember roots to see the faces of the living ones you admire (Lent, Mouré, Brand, Abel, every single amazing kid) and just maybe do something that merits their attention maybe maybe maybe always maybe maybe maybe and so on just so just so.”
Sample of Poet's Work
OUSE JACKET
Goodness in the light and goodness in the shadow attached where the water sets its horizon on the shore-sand; goodness in the sky and goodness in the lake attached where the carp is also a zeppelin commanding the air; goodness in the lawnmower blades which spin the propellers of the daisy to invent onomatopoeia to assist the flight of the bees; goodness in the chair broken by rain and goodness in the ivy reaching into the greenhouse out of vegetable loneliness; goodness in the faithful patient stupid boots; goodness in the dress shirt stuffed as a rag around the oil cap; goodness in the servant’s knife at the throat of the master; goodness in the cursive that appears to be resisting the wind
At the Vtoraya Rechka Trash Heap, a Bear Chats with Mandelstam
Did you ever notice that, when it’s for the gizzard,
the knife-blade collects all of the silver
from the evening? Also, the sound of stars,
in cartoons, when they sparkle is the sound
of a fork tapping a champagne-flute
and also of a burst of light
on the supermodel’s tooth.
If the dog walks through the whole house
why do the clicks mean foul play?
And why do you think the grief-stricken
throw themselves at the floor?
Real burlap will decompose over time,
but it doesn’t happen, as they say, “overnight.”
Did you ever notice that horses
are super okay with being all alone
out there in the fields?
The scariest film I ever saw is the one with Bill
the Butcher; he slaps the meat down
on that cutting block and boy it shivers me.