above/ground press at Toronto's Indie Literary Market, November 18

above/ground press will once again be participating in the annual Indie Literary Market, organized by Toronto's Meet the Presses collective for Saturday, November 18, 2017! See here for the Facebook invitation, and their website here, both of which even contain further information! Hoping to see you there! above/ground press has been producing an absolute ton of stuff lately...

some author activity: mclennan, Archer, dueck + Earl,

rob mclennan and Sacha Archer have new poems in the first issue of where is the river :: a poetry experiment; nathan dueck has new work up at Lemonhound; and Amanda Earl reads next week at Toronto's Harbourfront, as part of the International Festival of Authors.

rob mclennan reads in Kingston : Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre 40th Anniversary

rob mclennan reads in Kingston as part of the Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre 40th Anniversary.

Poetry Evening with an Open Mic

Common Market Café
136 Ontario St, Kingston, ON K7L 2Y4
http://www.thecommonmarket.ca/
7-9pm on 24 October 2017

On Tuesday, October 24 we are pleased to present an evening of poetry organized by Eric Folsom.

Featured poets will include Elizabeth Greene, rob mclennan and Susan McMaster.

More information is promised soon, via their website: http://www.modernfuel.org/news/835

some author activity: hanna, Pirie, Zisimatos + Christie,

natalie hanna interviews Kayla Czaga as part of the Arc Poetry Magazine newsletter; Pearl Pirie is featured in rob mclennan's monthly "spotlight" series; and Eleni Zisimatos and Jason Christie both have new essays up at my (small press) writing day.

new from above/ground press: dark ecologies, by natalie hanna

dark ecologies
natalie hanna
$5

colophon:

by a fountain in a public square, in the heart of a city garden, in the downtown core was my heart first published on a bench under partial shade of a tree with hazenut shaped leaves and dark bark.  where sleek men in suits lay on the grass twenty feet from a half naked cyclist rubbing his belly as he sunned himself on another bench, bicycle resting behind his shoulders. i remember eating lunch here with you with one summer and how you admonished me for feeding the birds. dear god, i thought, am i friends with a man who does not feed birds? young boys lay face down on the fountain rim, laughing and dangling their arms into water. a young man passed and handed me a flyer of the country's 150th birthday as a pigeon in the branch overhead considered whether i was fit to steal from or be shat upon. a cloud of pot smoke settled lazy on my shoulders from the nearby drowsy grass-throned caterpillar considering the afternoon in his cut off jeans, forrested legs crossed before him. i felt the concern of these ants on my calves, wrong way, wrong way, this is womanly skin on womanly leg, out of place today, when will this expanse end?

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2017
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

natalie hanna is a queer lawyer of middle eastern heritage whose writing focusses on feminist, political, and personal themes. she runs battleaxe (small) press, is the administrative director of the Sawdust Reading Series, and serves as board-member and newsletter editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.

This is her second chapbook with above/ground press, after “this evidence against you,” produced as STANZAS #21 (October 1999).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: The Children, by Katy Lederer

The Children
Katy Lederer
$5

Fetus Papyraceus

Sometimes, in the middle
of the night, our children will
insist that we tell them a story.
In the story, after heavy
rhyme and insistent inculcation
of our cultural mores,
our children will look down
at our apparent missing limbs,
which remind them
that they should not touch,
and, if they do decide to touch,
that absence can feel presence.
It can be difficult, this lesson,
and the children are defenseless
as we read to them this book.
They like to flap their hands
and look: at animals that long ago
died out. They roar and raise
their trunks. They lurk, alertly,
in their dens. We wonder
what has happened to their spirits
and discover, as an exercise,
such thinking is instructive.
Where is the presence
and the absence in this book?
The world is full of lulls
and shocks. To describe them all
would take a million lives.
What would it mean
to use up our one life like this?
And so we peel the pages back.
It is a treasure, this book.
It is a treasure beyond
the other treasures in the world
because the book is like
nothing. It is blank
with little colors, there.
Made from deciduous forest
and the end of time. We had once
walked along the boardwalks
very bored, in heavy weather,
under moonlit stars.
We had once held
our children in our arms.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2017
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Katy Lederer is the author of the poetry collections Winter Sex (Verse/Wave Books), The Heaven-Sent Leaf (BOA Editions), and The bright red horse—and the blue— (Atelos), as well as the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Crown). She is the editor of The Collected Explosive Magazine (Spectacular Books).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Hall, Earl, Iijima, hanna + Deen,

Phil Hall has a new poem up at Halibut Haiku; Amanda Earl has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day; Brenda Iijima has new work in issue #8 of DATABLEEDZINE; natalie hanna has a new poem up as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at dusie; and Amanda Earl's The Small Machine Talks interviews Faizal Deen.