THE WORK

Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1988. 96 pp. Poetry.

They warn you not to
dangerous they say
what if you get into trouble
what if

Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1990. 94 pp. Poetry

You and I have just finished
facing the emptiness, killing
the old year, the old life, leaving
the house that started us off.
New moon and old mattress.

Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1991. 120 pp. Poetry.

Someone is singled out for celebration
like a saint the Church decides on
counting up miracles
good works in multitudes.

Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1994. 80 pp. Poetry

Joan begins dancing at the edge of the sea.
Soon she’s half a mile over the waves
whirling in a tiny pavilion
to boom of surf and whistle of spray.

London, Ont: Black Moss Press, 1995. 160 pp. A post-feminist novel.

Katie arrived at Backwoodwaywardforwardawkwardarkwoodamnwoodnwood
Writers Retreat a day late.

Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1996. 152 pp. Introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

The I Love You List Poem

I love you
because your eyes are blue-with distant water
your speech the nervy racket of urban streets.

Xian, China: Shaanxi University Press, 1998, 160 pp. A translation into Chinese of The Selected Poems of Patricia Keeney with an introduction by Prof. Hongyin Wang, translator of the volume. Patricia Keeney’s Chinese name was used for the publication – Bai Di (pronounced Bye Dee) .

Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1999. 134 pp. Poetry

There are thunderstorms in Paris
Eiffel Tower’s a mist screen.
Winged things, giant flies
with blue and orange eyes
drown in heavy waters
of the Seine.

In Hindi. Jaipur: Vagdevi Press. 2000. 80 pp. Poetry.

London, Ont.: Pendas Productions, 2001. 48 pp. An experiment in poetry and theatre bringing together “a braided version” of several long poems by Keeney and Kemp. Performed in Jaipur, India and for Indian television, the work was later done in a number of theatrical and poetry venues in Canada. Vocal Braiding also exists as a CD.

How did you sleep?

Would you please open the blind and close the window?
Let light replace the sound of morning traffic.

translated and published in Bulgarian under the title Swimming Alone . Sofia: Epsilon Press, 2002, 94 pp.

Bergerac: Les Amis de la Poesie Press, 2002, 60 pp. French translation by Michele Duclos of Swimming Alone.. Winner of the Prix Jean Paris for the Best Book of Poetry in French Translation for that year.

Bergerac: Les Amis de la Poesie Press. 2007, 61 pp. French translation by Michele Duclos of “The Book of Joan” section of The Selected Poems of Patricia Keeney.

Bergerac. Les Amis de la Poesie. 2007, 33 pp. French translation by Michele Duclos of the “Book of Patrick” section of The Selected Poems of Patricia Keeney.

Toronto: Antares Press, 2011. 278 pp. Poetry and intercultural conversations between Patricia Keeney and Mexican poet Ethel Krauze. The conversations cover such areas as the challenge of the female artist working and living on either side of the American border, approaches to writing poetry, surviving love and living life fully. Each section is illustrated with a number of poems, Ethel having rendered Pat’s work into Spanish and Pat having rendered Ethel’s work into Spanish.
The Conversation
Two women writers sit facing each other on opposite sides of a desk in the airy front room of an apartment in Mexico city.

Toronto: Inanna Press. 2011. 96 pp. Poetry. Juxtaposed against a range of cultures, this new volume of poems is a series of personal and political journeys examining “the interior life”.

I want to tell you
about the first woman

my first woman

because you should know
fable and fact.

(Inanna 2016). A political novel, a human novel, a theatrical novel, One Man Dancing is set in Idi Amin’s Uganda and looks at the precarious and powerful role that art can play under a dictatorship. Based on true events, it follows the life of Charles Tumwesigye –an actor-dancer with the legendary Robert Serumaga’s Abafumi theatre company – who survives the horrors of war only to find himself lost in Europe as a political refugee and then physically shattered in a Canadian tornado. One Man Dancing moves from bold experiments with tales of traditional Africa told through music, myth and dance to the darkest worlds of international politics, artistic risk and personal endurance.

(NeoPoiesis, 2016). Based on the oldest of Greek songs in verse – the so-called Orphic Hymns, written even before Sun and Moon became gods in the pantheon, this breakthrough volume is a conversation between ancient and modern worlds, between myth and contemporary reality. The poetry of the gods enters into an active dialogue with Male and Female in a unique mix that is at once poetry and theatre. Keeney’s Orphics speak to the eternal connections between the grandeur of the cosmos and the intimacies of human psychology.

Alidades (alidades.fr 2023). A bilingual French/English edition of Patricia Keeney’s poems inspired largely by Greece and the throb of mythology. Translated by Michèle Duclos and Magdelaine Gibson.