new from above/ground press: then / here / now / there, by Cary Fagan

then / here / now / there
Cary Fagan
$5

a man on tenth street planting begonias / how afraid
and yet desperate to get up before class / she’s trying
to learn harmonica / torn / you say to him, ‘you are my
torturer’ / last night dreaming that i was dreaming of
my father / it isn’t necessary to finish war and peace,
is it? / when I have a good pen i want to write for its
sake

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cary Fagan has two books coming in 2025, A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News (book*hug) and Robot Island (Tundra Books). He is the co-publisher of the chapbook house espresso and the publisher of another chapbook house, Found Object and occasionally reviews chapbooks on word.music.blog.

This is Fagan's second above/ground press title, after Fifty-Two Lines About Henry (2024).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: pulp necrosis, by Gwen Aube

pulp necrosis
Gwen Aube
$5

Today I almost posted a photo of the tornado that struck Montreal when I ended my relationship. It’s been three months. Yesterday I sang in the streets with six thousand people between Station Guy-Concordia and Station Atwater. In 1957 Christine Jorgensen fucked the man in the moon. Today the girl at Tim Hortons wanted to tell me something funny but I don’t speak French and she doesn’t speak English. The sky was already so dark when I left the house for coffee. We laughed anyways. Her at whatever she was laughing at and I at nothing. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Gwen Aube is grateful to have received a decade of generous support from the Ontario Works welfare program. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming from LittlePuss Press.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Lives of Dead Poets, by Penn Kemp

Lives of Dead Poets
Penn Kemp
$5

Die Verse

As if. What matters. As if. What’s left.
As if. We have only our elegies. As if.

Even the need for elegy. As if remembering
and inventing—invenio —as if.

As I come upon. As I discover.
As if in passing through this vale.

As if memory’s world is
as if trudging up sludge,

As if the word that springs to
mind is devotion, as if, despite

the mess, life's unholy
business forever left

unfinished. Dead
poets, by your name

we shall know you,
by your work.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image: James Kemp

Penn Kemp has been celebrated as a trailblazer since her first publication (Coach House, 1972). Kemp has long participated in Canada’s cultural life, with 30+ books of poetry and prose; seven plays and multimedia galore in collaborations like www.riverrevery.ca. She was London, Ontario’s inaugural Poet Laureate, The League of Canadian Poets’ Spoken Word Artist (2015) and Life Member, acclaimed “a foremother of Canadian poetry”. Recent poetry collaborations include Intent on Flowering (https://rosegardenpress.ca); P.S., https://www.gapriotpress.com/shop/p/penn-kemp-sharon-thesen-p-s and her co-edited anthology for Ukraine, https://www.rsitoski.com/poems-in-response-to-peril. Penn’s latest collection of sound poetry, Incrementally, text and album, is on https://www.hempressbooks.com/authors/penn-kemp. Join her on https://www.instagram.com/pennkemp, https://pennkemp.substack.com, https://x.com/pennkemp and www.facebook.com/pennkemppoet. See also www.pennkemp.weebly.com and www.pennkemp.wordpress.com.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Rosenthal, carisse, Ballard, Niespodziany + Kelly,

Sarah Rosenthal has three poems up as part of LAdige Review's "California Series"; russell carisse has new work up at The Pi Review; Micah Ballard has new work up at the Spotlight series; Benjamin Niespodziany has new work at Bennington Review; and forthcoming author J-T Kelly is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

The Factory Reading Series, March 16, 2025: Etcheverry, Manery, mclennan, Turnbull + Wilkins,

The Factory Reading Series Presents:
readings by:

Jorge Etcheverry Arcaya (Ottawa)
Rob Manery (Vancouver)
rob mclennan (Ottawa)
Chris Turnbull (Kemptville)
+
Grant Wilkins (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Doors 7pm / Reading 7:30pm
Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa

Jorge Etcheverry Arcaya, Chilean-Canadian poet, lives in Ottawa, Canada. Professor of philosophy, master's degree in Hispanic language and literature, doctor in comparative literature. He was a member of the Escuela de Santiago and Grupo América, Chilean poetic groups of the 1960s-70s. His poetry, prose and criticism have been published in various countries in magazines and books in Spanish and translations into English, French, Italian and Portuguese. He has published art in various media and formats, on paper and virtually. His latest books are Clorodiaxepóxido, poems, Chile, 2017; Los herederos, science fiction novel, 2018; Canadografia, anthology of Spanish-Canadian prose, Chile, 2017; Samarkanda, poems, Canada, 2019; Outsiders, narratives in English, 2020; Orejas y vanguardias, Chile, 2024. Recently appears in the anthologies Wurlitzer, cantantes del recuerdo en la poesía chilena, Chile, 2018; Antología de la Revista Entre Paréntesis Chile, 2018; Antología de la poesía chilena de la última década, (Chile, 2018), Antología mundial: la papa, seguridad alimentaria (Bolivia, 2019), Bolivia, 2019; Anthologie de la poésie chilienne, 26 poètes d'aujourd'hui (France 2021). He is a collaborator and member of the editorial committee of Entreparéntesis magazine, from Chile, and Off the Record magazine, also Chilean. His latest book of poems is Orejas y vanguardias, Chile, 2024.

Robert Manery lives in Vancouver, BC, where he is the editor of Some, a print-only poetry magazine. He is the author of As They Say (BlazeVOX, 2024), It’s Not As If It Hasn’t Been Said Before (Tsunami Editions, 2001), and the chapbooks Richter-Rauzer Variations (above/ground press, 2012), Many, Not Any (Some Books, 2019), and Elegies (above/ground press, 2022).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. His latest collection is Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025).

Chris Turnbull's recent book is cipher (Beautiful Outlaw Press 2024). Her most recent chapbook is x° (Gap Riot Press). She curates a footpress, rout/e, whereby poetry can be found on trails or their pieces found on trails.

Grant Wilkins is an occasional poet, printer and papermaker who has made a practice of doing strange things to other people’s words. He has degrees in History & Classical Civilization and in English, and he’s working on another one in Art History. He lives in Ottawa on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.

collage by Gary Barwin,

some author activity: Logan, Burdick, Brenner, Barwin + Strang,

Nate Logan has new work up at The Pi Review, as does Alice Burdick; Summer Brenner is interviewed by Jane Rosenberg LaForge for Rain Taxi; Gary Barwin has posted a new poem-video online; Nate Logan also has new work up at The Under Review; and Catriona Strang joins the faculty at Banff Writing Studios as part of their summer program.

new from above/ground press: H IS THE LETTER OF THE DOOR, by Maxwell Gontarek

Maxwell Gontarek
H IS THE LETTER OF THE DOOR
$5

We shivered for the sinister flatness of the momentous
There’s no dawn
Iris loads the lake with its scent
It’s where the silicas wake up at the cloud ends
It’s where the ground nerve superimposes its stakes
            on the routs of which we all are is a part
It’s what amasses as history under the heels of our heels rigid
            and coruscant we feel ourselves stiffening with
The passage in landscape
Who pays
The carnage in soil
And that that carnage disappoints above below with such height
“For instants sometimes I cry” is the prime grammar of song
The “I” is a bell
The horizon is a showy diaphragmatic eye
To sow is to ex
True act the avenue

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Maxwell Gontarek has poems out in Grotto, Lana Turner, Coma, La Lancha, Tagvverk, and elsewhere, and his pamphlet, A Perfect Donkey, is forthcoming from Creative Writing Department. With Léa Fougerolle, he runs the translation project verseant. He has lived in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Belgrade, Langres, and Lafayette, LA.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com