It's fine actually. I'd just recommend that next time you introduce it to a conlanging group, you specify it's an artlang-verging-on-engelang inspired by Toki Pona, and that you consciously limit its expressiveness (just like Toki Pona).
The response you got here first is typical because most artlangers, here and elsewhere, follow the Naturalistic School, which says artlangs should be like real human languages or something close to that. There is an awareness auxlangs don't have to be naturalistic (and this goes without saying for engelangs, especially when they stress formal logic), but it is often forgotten this also applies to artlangs.
By the way, Kelen is often said to have verbs--they just happened to be named "the relationals". La is an existential, copula and possessive (there be + indefinite, be, have), pa is a possessive (have), ñi is a dynamic copula and causative auxiliary (become sth, make sb sth) and "go" and "be from X", and finally se is "give/receive" (+ke/mo), "take/steal" (+to/mo), "say" (+ien), "feel" (+two datives, one for the experiencer, one for the organ of perception) and a presentative (here/there be + definite). When not translatable with se, action verbs are usually translated with ñi + a sort of passive participle (which is rather a resultative in intransitive actions), especially when perfective, while statives and imperfectives tend to be translated with la or pa + the passive participle-like thing.
I have no idea how the author of Kelen reacts to this kind of comment though, but it has been made for a long time... I imagine she reacts negatively to it, and insists her no-verb analysis is correct. I personally don't see what the problem is in calling it a conlang with a tiny closed verbal category, where light verb constructions are used in abundance.
As another by the way, lots of languages have something similar to the Toki Pona context marker la. In linguistics we usually call them "topic markers", and gloss them with the abbreviation "TOP".
