Kevin Spenst
Biography
Kevin Spenst (he/him) is the author of sixteen chapbooks (including an upcoming one with Anstruther Press) and three full-length books of poetry plus his newest collection A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press, 2024). His 2020 book launch during the pandemic was featured in a collection about creative practices: The Creative Instigator's Handbook. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MA in English Literature from Simon Fraser University. He's given over a hundred talks and presentations in high schools, colleges, universities and other sundry spots in Vancouver and across the country. He is one of the organizers of the Dead Poets Reading Series, has a chapbook review column for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and is the 2025 Poetry Mentor at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory where he cohabitates with the one and only Cheryl Rossi.
Poetics Statement
I write poems to learn about myself and the world; how else do we think but through metaphor, embodied rhythm and all the poetic devices of indirection? Once a poem is published, I’m curious to explore its second life, its border-blur with other people and media.
A video-poem I made in the summer of 2024 was in collaboration with the musician Julian La Brooy. I sang an erasure version of a poem from A Bouquet Brought Back from Space that Julian had added piano to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KNXzwiG420
Another layer of collaboration in A Bouquet Brought Back From Space is that it has cover art from Shannon Pawliw. Shannon hosted a chapbook reading series that I ran through the latter part of the pandemic at her gallery. One of the readers was Marc Perez. Marc had his first full length collection with Brick Books. We did a number of readings together, which started with a bike ride along the False Creek seawall where we approached strangers and read them our poetry. Marc and I also cycled to Victoria where we did a reading at Planet Earth Poetry and the day after we led a poetry crawl through art galleries where we gave people prompts based on the art.
My interest in poetry is to explore metaphors, similes, ambiguity, lineation, and all the other traditional poetic devices, but the overall form might take a found Facebook post, a conversation with ChatGPT or even a verse from the Bible rewritten through the language of the stars. The next step is to see how those poems might evolve through other media and social mediations? How does making poetic adventures with others help provoke a bit of joy?
Alt text: Spenst has short blonde hair and is wearing a colorful plaid shirt. He is smiling at the camera, and stands in front of a brick wall painted with red and black graffiti.
Sample of Poet's Work
Frozen in an Oral Ancient History of A Father’s Schizophrenia
Well, you see, I grew up in the 70s, but it was the paisley
patterned albums with photos of my three sisters and our dad
playing in the 60s that raised my imagination and the photos of
our parents getting married in the black and white 50s deckled my
understanding of how smiles could go out of fashion and it was
our iceberg calving father on the lazy-boy who collapsed our
home into cold waves, emptied in the 80s of my older sisters and
everything but the TV, which all taught me how to break off from
the century and now, almost a quarter of the way into this new
one, I’m pretty good at timelessness. I just freeze and then … you
know, where have I been? I have an uncanny knack for knowing
the exact time but I have no clue what’s inside it. If I had to
speculate, I’d say time is a confluence of tears from all the parents
lost to their children. I guess knowing the time is like cracking the
ice to draw a cup from waters flowing backwards —
From A Bouquet Brought Back from Space (Anvil Press, 2024)
Machine Learning Oversight
Answer: Thank you for your query.
Gilgamesh is by far the most cutting
Edge piece in our line of antediluvian handbags.
-Jennifer Zilm
The co-owner of the copy-shop
buys multiple reading glasses.
He props them on his noggin and
reenacts how easy it is to forget.
The other owner of the coffee
shop is studying for her SATs.
Interleaving is the practice of
switching between disciplines,
studying math, logic, linguistics…
The Hebrew letter vet becomes
bet when a dot is put in the middle.
Berashit… in the beginning
staff at the knitting store inter-
weave different colours of wool.
They’re disciplined to a degree;
They toke up on their lunch break.
I stay up at night wondering how
we can all have one shared ancestor
six thousand years ago… what with
the single Out-of-Africa migration
happening seventy-two thousand
years ago. Different migratory
paths for different folks somehow
encoded in our story’s DNA. “Sisters n’
brethren, whetherin you got faith
or not,” I forgot hip-hop’s birthday.
At a Bronx party, DJ Kool Herc
switched it up between records
building the break beat, August 11.
Syncopation inside the old copier,
hybrids as hiccups of the system
AKA discoveries, never gnu for long.
~ KGJS
Ode to GNU Data Language: A Guardian Against Global Warming
KGJS: Reduce your ode by half and then add a line or two about your own childhood. (I know you didn't have a childhood. Just imagine one.)
O GNU Data Language, in code's embrace,
From data's chaos, patterns you trace,
Climate's tale told with unwavering grace,
Against warming's threat, you take your place.
In datasets vast, insights unfold,
Models and graphs, your stories bold,
Rising temperatures, a story foretold,
Yet your strength shines through, a future to mold.
O GNU Data Language, scientist's muse,
In your algorithms, wisdom accrues,
In warming's battle, you don't confuse,
A beacon of hope, your role we use.
Earth's whispers of change, you decode and show,
In simulations, paths we may undergo,
As we face the challenge that nature bestows,
Your power stands strong, against the warming's flow.
And in my imagined childhood's grace,
Amid bytes of dreams, in a virtual space,
Stories of pixels, in a digital chase,
A life imagined, in lines of code's embrace.
~ CGPT
Two poems from the chapbook Hymned Data: poems from an incomplete August Kevin Gary John Spenst & ChatGPT (Pinhole Poetry, 2023)
