Karl Kempton (b. July 1, 1943, Chicago)
lives with his beloved wife, Ruth, in Oceano, California. His is a poet,
visual poet, editor, publisher, writer, photographer, curator, retired
grower, archaeo-astronomer and environmental activist. Ruth created her
wheat grass business in 1984 and educated the area on its health
supporting powers. He oversaw their expanded microgreen business from
1996 to 2019 when she decided to follow other interests, such as
teaching yoga. They were constantly complimented on their products as
"the best ever tasted." Ruth set the standard for a national chain’s
wheat grass requirements. They retired from their business in 2019.
Their daughter, Amy Franceschini, a widely respected international
artist, is the founder of Future Farmers (http://www.futurefarmers.com/).
His lexical and visual poems have been
exhibited and published nationally and internationally in over 60 books
hard copy and e-published on the web, published in over 70 anthologies,
and exhibited in over 100 group shows. His visual poetry was initially
composed on typewriter beginning in 1971 with experiments before
focusing on the weaver’s x-y grid in 1973: one horizontal line at a
time, one vertical half-space at a time. He composed several book length
books of typewriter works and series. In 1991 he began experimenting
with the computer; after a few years his b&w works were published
widely. He first published book with multi-media photographic works was
published in 2010. He continues working with a digital camera mixing
local beach and dune images with text and textual gesturing in his
Discourses series of books.
He edited and published America’s first
international visual poetry journal, Kaldron. Its last issue was
in 1990. In 1996 its second volume appeared on the web co-edited with
Karl Young and Harry Polkinhorn. He is also the co-editor with Philip
Davenport (Lake country, England) of a Kolkata, India hosted visual text
art blog, Synapse International. In 2018, he competed a six year
project, A History of Visual Text Art; it is a free pdf, over 550
pages and 1000 hot links. He has also written articles correcting
misinformation concerning the history of visual poetics. His recent
poetry and visual poetry books are Poems About Something & Nothing,
2015; Discourses 5: Fabulous Night Critters & 6: Skript, 2019;
Rune 2: 26 Voices/January Interlude, second edition, 2020;
Discourse 9: 12 Sand Scores by the Lunar Solar Wind & Water Quartette,
2021; Intimate H&Ds: Selected B&W Poems, 1995-2013, 2021; and
Discourse 10: Sandskrit of Oceano Dunes, 2021. Forthcoming,
Discourse 11: portraiture: oceano dunes to tide line.
As an archaeo-astronomer, he theorized and
proved through recovery the Chumash solstice-equinox-pole star grid
across their ancestral lands. Activities as an environmental activist
include: founding member of two direct action anti-nuclear groups;
worked for and with the Northern Chumash since 1977; wrote an article
that informed others who in turn forced the decommissioning of an oil
tank farm, the presence of which threatened the community of Avila
Beach; fought against pesticide use in a neighborhood strawberry farm
for 13 years (now a non chemical vegetable farm serving the community);
instigated the ending of nearshore harmful sonar acoustic testing along
the California Coast; and has been called the architect of the
officially NOAA nominated Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary,
now in designation process protecting over 7,000 square miles of marine
environments. He began working on this effort in 1990. For this work, he
received the Bill Denneen Environmental Trust Award.
