new from above/ground press: More of How to Read the Bible, by J-T Kelly

More of How to Read the Bible
J-T Kelly
$6

More of How to Read the Bible

Moses always disappearing to ask you what to do.
Comes back with a snake on a stick.
Comes back with water from a staff-struck rock.
Comes back with the law.
Comes back with his face shining.
Where would we be if he gave all this up for
the loneliness of the mountain,
of the heart?

When I am alone, you are with me. But I am not alone.
We are practically legion down here,
suffering, sinning, singing.
We go back to our old ways in a New York minute.
Hide the affair behind the expense account.
Let the perjured testimony stand.
Turn away the boats at the beach.

How to be a people. How to have a god.
I'm not sure I can have you all by my lonesome.
Not sure I can sin without some solidarity.
Not sure salvation
parses out the individual.

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

J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife, their six children, his two parents, his brother, and a dog. Poems in The Denver Quarterly, Bad Lilies, and elsewhere. Chapbook Like Now (CCCP/Subpress, 2023). Full-length ms in circulation.

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

the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch/party! August 7 at RedBird,

celebrating THIRTY-TWO YEARS of continuous activity (and nearly fourteen hundred publications), Ottawa publisher above/ground press presents:

readings and chapbook launches by:

Jason Christie (Ottawa), Monty Reid (Ottawa), Beatriz Hausner (Toronto), Ellen Chang-Richardson (Ottawa), Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (Toronto) + Mandy Sandhu (Toronto);

lovingly hosted by above/ground press editor/publisher rob mclennan
THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2025 at RedBird
7pm door/7:30pm reading 

$18 ; includes copies of three recent above/ground press titles ; Tickets available via RedBird, or at the door; [see the report here from last year’s event] 

author/performer biographies: 

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan, and currently lives in Ottawa. He is the author of the full-length collection Karst Means Stone (NeWest Press, 1979), The Life of Ryley (Thistledown Press, 1981), The Dream of Snowy Owls (Longspoon Press, 1983), The Alternate Guide (Red Deer College Press, 1985), These Lawns (Red Deer College Press, 1990), Dog Sleeps: Irritated Texts (NeWest Press, 1993), Crawlspace: New and Selected Poems (House of Anansi Press, 1993), Flat Side (Red Deer College Press, 1998), Disappointment Island (Chaudiere Books, 2006), Luskville Reductions (Brick Books, 2008), Garden (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and Meditatio Placentae (Brick Books, 2016), as well as a mound of chapbooks. The former Managing Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine, he was the Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival for more than a decade.

Reid is the author of seven titles through above/ground press: Six Songs for the Mammoth Steppe (2000), cuba A book (2005), In the Garden (sept series) (2011), Moan Coach (2013), seam (2018), Where there’s smoke (2023) and cuba A book: twentieth anniversary edition (2025), which he will be launching as part of this event. above/ground press produced Report from the Reid Society Vol. 1 No. 1 (2022).

Jason Christie lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and two children and no pets. His published books include Canada Post (Invisible), i-Robot (EDGE/Tesseract), Unknown Author (Insomniac), and Cursed Objects (Coach House). He’s wrapping up a new collection that he wrote with/against/for AI.

Christie is the author of nine chapbooks with above/ground press: 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004), Government (2013), Cursed Objects (2014), The Charm (2015), random_lines = random.choice (2017), glass language (excerpt) (2018), Bridge and Burn (2021) and glass / language / untitled / exaltation (2023; second printing, 2023), which won the bpNichol Chapbook Award, as well as PSA (2025), which he will be launching as part of this event.

Beatriz Hausner has published several poetry collections, including The Wardrobe Mistress (2003), Sew Him Up (2010), Enter the Raccoon (2012), Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020) and She Who Lies Above (2023), as well as many limited edition chapbooks. Her books have been published internationally and translated into several languages, including her native Spanish, French, and most recently Greek. Hausner writes extensively about surrealism and her translations of Spanish American surrealist poets have exerted an important influence on her own writing. Hausner has edited journals and magazines, including Open Letter, ellipse, Exile Quarterly, as well as many of the books published during her tenure as a publisher of Quattro Books. She is the editor of Someone Editions, and its current project French Letter Society. Beatriz Hausner was President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission. She lives in Toronto where she publishes The Philosophical Egg, an organ or living surrealism. Currently, with Russell Smith, she curates and runs the lecture series Soluble Fish. She will be launching her above/ground press debut chapbook, The Oh Oh (2025).

Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet, multi-genre writer, judicial assistant, and editor of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent. A third culture kid at heart, Ellen’s writing is informed by their love of contemporary art, their concern with humanity’s impact on Earth, and their experience moving through various societies as a femme-presenting genderqueer. The author/co-author of six other poetry chapbooks, Ellen’s multi-genre writing has appeared in Augur, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Plenitude, Watch Your Head, and more. Their debut collection, Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. They are a co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, an editor for Room and long con magazine, and a member of the poetry collective VII. Find out more at www.ehjchang.com. They will be launching their above/ground press debut, The Moleskin Coat (2025).

Lina Ramona Vitkauskas is a Canadian-American-Lithuanian formerly from Chicago, living in Toronto. She is an award-winning, published poet & video poet. She was a 2020 recipient of a PEN America grant for her development of an experimental poetry collection that adapted poems from Vsevolod Nekrasov and Bill Knott. She was also the voice of George Maciunas’ mother in the documentary, GEORGE (directed by Jeffrey Perkins) screened at MoMA and in Vilnius. Her work has been most recently featured in/at: Film Video Poetry Society (Los Angeles); Octopus Film Festival (Gdansk, Poland); John Gagné Contemporary Gallery (Toronto): Post-Future Era with Kunel Gaur, Justin Neely, and Confusions (Ben Turner); Poetic Phonotheque (Denmark); MOCA Toronto (public installation); SIFF (Moldova); Newlyn Film Festival (UK); Festival Fotogenia (Mexico); Midwest Poetry Fest (US); Vienna Video Poetry Festival (Austria); and the International Migration & Environmental Film Festival (Canada). Her website is linaramona.com. She will be launching her above/ground press debut, The Deaf Forest of Cosmic Scaffolding (2025).

Mandy Sandhu is a poet based in Oakville, Ontario. Her work, often in sonnet form, blends vivid imagery with sharp observation, drawing inspiration from writers like Sylvia Plath, the Beats, Dale Smith and Ted Berrigan.  Mandy works at Toronto Metropolitan University in the Disability Office. She will be launching her chapbook debut, The Temporary Space of a Placenta (2025).

for media inquires, as ever, send a note to rob mclennan at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com,

 

some author activity: McNair, mclennan, Norris, Sweeney, Munson, Novak + Ross,

Christine McNair is interviewed by Hollay Ghadery for the New Books Network podcast; rob mclennan has a new poem up at NewPoetry.ca, and an interview conducted by Victoria Cole for Horseshoe Literary Journal; Ken Norris has an excerpt of a memoir up at The Typescript; Heather Sweeney now has a substack; Jed Munson and JoAnna Novak have new work in DIAGRAM; and did you know that Stuart Ross' Proper Tales Press is now on Instagram?

video from an above/ground press zoom launch : May 28, 2025 : Tierney, Quartermain, Houglum, Doller, Jenks + mclennan

the recording of a recent above/ground press zoom launch is now online : May 28, 2025 : with readings by above/ground press authors Orchid Tierney (OH), Meredith Quartermain (BC), Brook Houglum (BC), Sandra Doller (NY), Tom Jenks (UK) and rob mclennan (ON). Do you remember the other above/ground press zoom launch from last year, as well? And be sure to catch a bunch of other videos over at the YouTube channel, including the ongoing 'virtual reading series' via periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

see author biographies for the event here

some author activity: Stebner, Martin, Berlatsky, Banks, Mohammadi, Moure + Solomon,

Kevin Stebner answers the '12 or 20 questions' interview; Camille Martin has a series of photographs newly posted online; Noah Berlatsky has new work up at dadakuku; Chris Banks has an essay forthcoming in Best Canadian Essays 2026, and Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi, Erín Moure and Misha Solomon have poems forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2026.

new from above/ground press: DOWN WATER STREET, by Terri Witek

DOWN WATER STREET
Terri Witek
$6

Vessel 1


After river-gathering elsewhere, a vessel arrives, catches. The story may be different where you are, but this time it was dipped then dropped by a stoop-weary nun. Lucky you who found it anyway, wet glint in sand. Now take out the people. A shard meshed in a river god's hair slowly reaches the lap of a waiting cypress. Nicks until sap beads but stays. Now X the gods. River touches sea and can’t return.

I say this because my sister’s not tight with her neighbor, who thinks birds queue for my sister’s bird feeder on her very own clothesline and shit shit shit. My sister neither moves the feeder nor declines to let her dog dig while the neighbor hisses.

But of course the neighbor’s lover passes and the woman turns poorly. Tears do something to proximities and it should have come as no surprise though it did that the neighbor’s legs begin to weep. Only the backs, so she both feels and imagines drops dragging down to gold carpet. My sister starts dressing her neighbor’s wounds. Yellow serum, she says, a pattern of holes. And     , who is, as they say, terminal, helps my sister back to her feet after my sister dresses the last little red weeper near her neighbor’s heel

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

Terri Witek is the author of 8 previous full-length books of poems and many chapbooks: the most recent, Something’s Missing in This Museum, was published by Anhinga Press in 2023.  Exit Island was a Florida Book Award medalist; The Rape Kit was the Slope Editions Prize 2018 winner, judged by Dawn Lundy Martin. Martin calls The Rape Kit “ a grand success, the best we’ll get. Fresh, relevant, and heartbreaking” and “a fire in the throat of a culture that has no appropriate language for rape and its aftermath…”

Witek’s visual poetics work is featured in JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (2021), and in the WAAVe Global Gallery of Women’s Asemic Writing and Visual Poetry (2021) as well as in arts venues.  The poet’s collaborations with Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) have, since 2005, been shown nationally and internationally: in New York, Seoul, Miami, Lisbon, Valencia (Spain) and Rio de Janeiro. The duo have been represented by The Liminal gallery in Valencia: their most recent collaboration was featured at ARCO, Madrid (2023) where the Liminal won special jury mention. Since 2011, collaborations with new media artist Matt Roberts (mattroberts.com) often use augmented reality technology and have been featured in Matanza (Colombia), Lisbon, Glasgow, Vancouver, and Miami.  Recent collaborative work with poet Amaranth Borsuk loops the pandemic and the eco-crisis as a crisis of rain and smoke between worlds; that with weaver Paula Damm combines text/textile. Individual and collaborative work has been featured in a wide variety of text venues, including Fence, The Colorado Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Slate, Hudson Review, Lana Turner, The New Republic, and many other journals and anthologies.

With Cyriaco Lopes, Witek team-teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson University’s low-residency MFA of the Americas; they also run The Fernando Pessoa Game as faculty in the summer Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon. Witek holds the university’s Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing and is the recipient of both the McInery Award and the John Hague Award for teaching.  terriwitek.com

This is Witek’s second above/ground press title, after the collaborative W / \ S H: INITIAL CONTACT (2021), with Amaranth Borsuk.

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

Meredith Quartermain, Catriona Strang, Brook Houglum : above/ground press (Vancouver) chapbook launch : June 15 2025

Meredith Quartermain, Catriona Strang, Brook Houglum
: above/ground press (Vancouver) chapbook launch

June 15, 2025 @ 7pm | People’s Co-Op Books
1391 Commercial Drive | Vancouver, BC | V5L 3X5

Meredith Quartermain’s most recent book is Lullabies in the Real World (shortlisted for an Alberta Book Publishers’ award). Vancouver Walking won a BC Book Award for Poetry, and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award. She is also the author of two novels and two books of short fiction: Recipes from the Red Planet (BC fiction award finalist) and I, Bartleby. From 2014-2016, she served as Poetry Mentor in the SFU Writer’s Studio program. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, Prism International, The Dalhousie Review, Event Magazine, The Capilano Review, Golden Handcuffs Review, and many other magazines. She will be launching her above/ground press title, Things Musing (April 2025).

A founding member of the Institute for Domestic Research, Catriona Strang is the author of Unfuckable Lardass, Reveries of a Solitary Biker, Corked, and Low Fancy, and  co-author of Light Sweet Crude, Cold Trip, and Busted with the late Nancy Shaw, whose selected works, The Gorge, she edited.

She frequently collaborates with composer Jacqueline Leggatt, and lives with her two grown kids on stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ Lands. She has been involved for decades in the Vancouver writing community, including in her paid work as editor at Talonbooks. She is recovering from decades of caring labour. She will be launching her above/ground press debut, from What If I Sang "Flower of Scotland"? (January 2025).

Brook Houglum [see her recent author spotlight interview here] has recently published the chapbooks Anthronoise (2024) and Inventory (2025) with above/ground press. She teaches at Capilano University and lives in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ lands. She will be launching her second above/ground press title, INVENTORY (April 2025).