new from above/ground press: the hack of heaven, by Buck Downs

the hack of heaven
Buck Downs
$5

the hack of heaven

                                                baby got

                                her biggest

                                                smile on

                                watching out

                with either eye

                I am not here

to know what it means

                it all goes fast

when I just listen

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

A native of Jones County, Miss., Buck Downs lives in Washington D.C. where he works as a book doctor and executive writing coach. Poems can be found online at The Brooklyn Rail and in print at The Chill (Australia).

This is Downs’ second chapbook with above/ground press, after Shiftless(Harvester) (2016).

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

Greg Bem reviews Brenda Iijima's SWAMP / SWAMP (2017) and Carrie Hunter's Series out of Sequence (2017) at Yellow Rabbits

Seattle WA poet and reviewer Greg Bem was good enough to provide the first reviews of Brenda Iijima's SWAMP / SWAMP (2017) and Carrie Hunter's Series out of Sequence (2017) over at Yellow Rabbits. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here. It reads:

A mid-weekend review session: two new books by above/ground press.

“Advancing negligible inches, the reeds are porous barriers, beige poles sharp tall, we are not soldiers, this is not a battlefield at present, but was it?” In Brenda Iijima’s SWAMP SWAMP, a response to the 1971 film SWAMP by Robert Smithson, concepts of terraforming and terra-informing lead to better knowing the form of humans. Feminist, postcolonial, journalistic, what starts at the beginning of the swamp leads through it, the element of the surprise, the unexpected, and the unpredictable binding us to new relationships with knowledge, besieged by and through white settler imperialists, entire systems of militaries, and the shadows of society that rear their head through and through by a revisiting of recent and subconscious representations. Released in 2017.

“If you cannot be honest with yourself, how can you get the truth out of anyone else?” Life’s ride’s most enjoyable moments are enjoying the moments of life. Livelihood and the inclusion of experience is a theme erupting from the strands of language threaded together in Carrie Hunter’s Series out of Sequence, which collages together lines from at least a handful of contemporary and nearly-contemporary films and television shows, from Minority Report to Daredevil. The result is a book of poetry that feels as alive as the maximalist culture we live within, an ecology of its own. Here, in this anti-sequence, there is the sense of the ecological, but also the sense of the chaotic, as contexts morph and blend and merge into one another. And yet via Hunter as the peripheral artist of the craft, the language feels universal and total, allowing an experience wholly unique and of itself, but beyond itself, magnetically envisioning the limits (and limitlessness the same) of our world. Released in 2017.

Recommended listening: "Endangered Species" by Pat Metheny and Ornette Coleman.

new from above/ground press: Entering Sappho, by Sarah Dowling

Entering Sappho
Sarah Dowling
$5

IN Ninety-seven Troys

Eighty-three Eurekas

Fifty-seven Etnas

Fifty-six Antiochs

Fifty-four Athenses

Fifty-four Romes

Fifty-one Albions

And fifty Arcadias

In forty-nine Palmyras

Forty-eight Spartas

Forty-five Senecas

Thirty-nine Phoenixes

Thirty-nine Alphas

Thirty-seven Homers

Thirty-six Caledonias

Thirty-six Carthages

Thirty-five Macedonias

Thirty-three Uticas

And thirty-one Corinths

In thirty Milos

Twenty-nine Omegas

Twenty-seven Smyrnas

Twenty-five Argoses

Twenty-five Adrians

And twenty-four Olympias

I wake up and disappear

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

Sarah Dowling is the author of DOWN (Coach House, 2014) and Security Posture (Snare, 2009) which received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She has previously published one chapbook, Birds & Bees (TrollThread, 2012), as well as numerous shorter works in literary journals. Sarah teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell.

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

Karen Massey interviewed/featured in Arc Poetry Magazine #83

above/ground press author Karen Massey (author of the chapbooks Bullet from 1999 and Strange Fits of Beauty & Light from 2014) is Arc Poetry Magazine's first "Emerging Writer Feature," which includes five new poems, as well as a short interview conducted by Arc editor Rhonda Douglas. You have to pick up a copy of the issue to see the full interview, but a fragment of it reads:

RD: Tell me a little about what occupies you as a writer... do you feel like ou are addressing any central thematic concerns?

KM: I think there are some of the same central concerns. I'm mostly interested in form right now. In my earlier work, in my first chapbook for example, there are some conversations with other writers. I would start with a title, like "Sylvia Plath in Heaven Does Tie-Dye," and then riff on that. Then I found an old textbook, of the time my mother would have been in school, and I realized there was all this older Canadian poetry that they would have studied and I hadn't read any of it, and so as a way to get into them I started to make erasure poems from the originals. And that's how the chapbook I did with rob mclennan (Strange Fits of Beauty & Light) came about... I'm trying to bring some of those ideas into the now. A lot of my stuff comes from titles and I'll go back from there. I hvae one poem recently where I had the title for two years but I had to do some research and the poems sit there for a while, percolating or fermenting, and then they write themselves. And then I edit them. For me, that's the fun part, going back over and editing.

some author activity: Baker, Downs, Saklikar + McNair,

Jennifer Baker has become the new Reviews Editor over at Arc Poetry Magazine; audio of Buck Downs reading at the Line Reading Series, at the Drawing Center, NYC is now online; Surrey poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar is running teen poetry workshops; and Christine McNair is interviewed over at Open Book.

Nikki Sheppy reviews Julia Polyck-O'Neill's Femme (2016) in Arc Poetry Magazine #83

Calgary poet and critic Nikki Sheppy was good enough to post the first review of Julia Polyck-O'Neill's Femme (2016) in the new issue of Arc Poetry Magazine. Thanks so much! You have to pick up a copy of the issue to see the full review, but a fragment of it reads:

In this collection, the room is a feminist forum inhabited by poet Sylvia Plath, conceptual artist Gillian Wearing, literary theorist Hélène Cixous, and postcolonial queer theorist Sara Ahmed, among others. These lines of influence are named and engaged: Polyck O’Neill invokes several titles that absorb her attention: Plath’s “Elm,” Cixous’ Stigmata, and Ahmed’s “Affective Economies.” The effect is to expand the subject, the body and its language to surrounding feminist genealogies, engendering an inquisitive dialogue that is genuinely rhizomatic. In the matter of communication, “Hers is a field model.”

The Factory Reading Series: Irwin, Rhodes + Landers, August 12, 2017

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
The Factory Reading Series:

with readings by:

Marilyn Irwin (Ottawa)
Shane Rhodes (Ottawa)
+ Sue Landers (Brooklyn NY)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Saturday, August 12, 2017
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Shortlisted for the 2016 bpNichol Award and winner of the 2013 Diana Brebner Prize, Marilyn Irwin’s [pictured] work has been published by Apt. 9 Press, Arc Poetry Magazine, Matrix Magazine, Puddles of Sky, and The Steel Chisel, among others. north, her eighth chapbook, and third published by above/ground press, was released earlier this year. She runs shreeking violet press in Ottawa.

See her 2015 Jacket2 interview here: http://jacket2.org/commentary/short-interview-marilyn-irwin

Shane Rhodes is the author of six books of poetry, including his most recent Dead White Men (2017, Coach House Books). Other titles include Err, which was nominated for the City of Ottawa Book Award in 2012, X, which created poetry out of Canada’s post-Confederation treaties, and The Wireless Room, which won the Alberta Book Award. Shane’s poetry has also been featured in the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry in 2008, 2011, 2012 and 2014, Breathing Fire II, and was awarded the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry.

See his recent Touch the Donkey interview here: http://touchthedonkey.blogspot.ca/2016/09/ttd-supplement-61-seven-questions-for.html

Sue Landers is a poet from Brooklyn. She is author of Franklinstein, which tells the story of one Philadelphia neighborhood wrestling with the legacies of colonialism, racism, and capitalism. She is also the author of two books of poetry, 248 mgs., a panic picnic and Covers, as well as two chapbooks, 15: A Poetic Engagement with the Chicago Manual of Style and What I Was Tweeting While You Were on Facebook. She is currently writing about riding every New York City subway line from end to end.

See her recent Touch the Donkey interview here: http://touchthedonkey.blogspot.ca/2017/06/ttd-supplement-81-seven-questions-for.html