​Too Vast for Sleep
published by Littoral Press in Richmond, CA, 2020 

Too Vast for Sleep contains 69 poems to keep you company as you shelter in place. The book has five sections: “Trail Break,” “The Urgency,” “And So We Advance Together,” “Walking to Work,” and “Once, My Students and I Were Laughing.” It is a gathering of open-air poems from the backcountry of the Colorado Plateau and the streets of my small city; love poems for Fern, spanning our 35 years of marriage; poems of urgency about "this thing called time"; poems for and about the students with whom it was my privilege to work for 30 years; and more. The cover image is by David Marx. 

Copies of Too Vast for Sleep are $15 (including shipping), and may be ordered in either of two ways:
  1. Remit $15 to the PayPal account at rkempa@westernwyoming.edu, and include your mailing address in the space marked “Note.”
  2. Send a check, with mailing address, to 2309 Broadway, Grand Junction, CO 81507.
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​A Bundle of Poems: Get Too Vast for Sleep and Ten Thousand Voices, my previous book (see below), for $20, postage included.
​ON FOOT: Grand Canyon Backpacking Stories
edited by Rick Kempa
Flagstaff: Vishnu Temple Press, 2014
  • Bob Bordasch gives the anatomy of how not to hike the canyon, in his tale of a sun-blasted misadventure on the Deer Creek Trail. 
  • Ranger Kristi Rugg recounts a soulful midnight hike in high summer up the South Kaibab, when exhaustion gives way to renewal.
  • D.J. Lee relates how a daughter and father see each other most clearly in
    a pivotal moment of shared danger on the Beamer Trail. 
  • On a leisurely rim-to-rim-to-rim hike one fall, Molly Hollenbach attains deep insight into the
    inscrutable Vishnu Schist. 
  • After hundreds of the best days of his life in the canyon backcountry, Nic Korte finds himself on a moving slab of rock headed for a cliff, shouting, “No, no, no, no!
These are five of the twenty-seven tales of adventure, discovery, danger, and deep solitude in this first-ever anthology devoted to the Grand Canyon backpacking experience. Novice hikers express their wide-eyed wonder, while veteran canyoneers reflect on how the place has shaped their character. Rangers, trail workers, scientists, and guides provide unique perspectives. Writing from the corridor trails, the backcountry trails, and the vast canyon wilderness, these authors offer intimate views of what it is like to be afoot beneath the rim.
Ten Thousand Voices
poems by Rick Kempa
illustrated by Sharon Dolan
Oakland: Littoral Press, 2013. 

"I savored this collection of poems and will return to it as I might to a
favorite backcountry camp. It serves as a map toward a life well lived, on which you  may notice some of Rick Kempa's trail notes: get up early, be surprised, explore forbidden places, enjoy the thirst as much as the water, honor common  creatures, walk slowly, be attentive to friends, love your partner, offer hope to the hopeless, make tea, sit still. Ten Thousand Voices is both a splash of cool water and a clearing in the sun."   Peter Anderson, former publisher of Pilgrimage Magazine, and author of FIRST CHURCH OF THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS.
Keeping the Quiet
poems by Rick Kempa
illustrated by Sharon Dolan
Oakland: Littoral Press, 2013.

"Quiet" describes Kempa's style well: plain-spoken, soft and not too wordy,
saying what is necessary and nothing more....There are two main personas in this
book. The first is The Wanderer. In his younger incarnation, some of the
wandering, backpacking and hitchhiking is done alone, some with friends, some
with strangers, and this young Kempa always seems more at home outside than in.
When he does wander into town, his observations of the human world, of the
humans, feels like the coyote looking in the window. The second persona, appearing in the middle sections of the book, I call The Witness. These poems shift from the 'outside' to the inside, to family and friends. In them, he chronicles the care for, and passing, of both his grandmother, and then his mother. There is an, inevitable I suppose, sense of helplessness that caregiving involves, and more than anything maybe being a witness means being a rememberer. --Excerpt from review by John Yohe in BOXCAR POETRY REVIEW www.boxcarpoetry.com/027

"What the Canyon Teaches," a poetry broadside, is printed from handset metal type with a 100+-year-old platen press on dampened handmade St. Armand paper, in an edition of 150. The font is Della Robbia. Lisa Rappoport at Littoral Press in Oakland, CA. designed and printed the broadside. Artist Sharon Dolan currently lives in Higginsville, Missouri.

The broadside is available in three colors: gold, terracotta, and sand-brown—or, in canyon parlance, Coconino, Redwall, and Tapeats.
Other books in which Rick's work appears
Check your favorite local bookstore or look online for any of these!