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

Greg Bem reviews rob mclennan's King Kong (2016) on Goodreads

Greg Bem was good enough to post the first review of my chapbook King Kong (2016) over at Goodreads. Thanks so much! You can see the whole review here. It reads:

This is a whacky pamphlet of poems that will leave you astounded at the canonization of North American poetry extended into such an array of strange and baffling contexts and contents. Enjoyable within the realm of quirks, King Kong reiterates the play and pride of Mclennan and his knack for the limp and romp of contemporary writ.

the above/ground press summer sale! and today is the press' 24th birthday!

Where do the years go? Thanks to Alexander Monker back in 2013, I rediscovered that today is the anniversary of the first above/ground press reading and launch, way way back in 1993 (I'd spent years presuming the anniversary was in August, for some reason), so I thought we should celebrate twenty-four years (and more than eight hundred publications) with a glorious summer sale!

$25 for any 6 2017 chapbook titles! (until August 15, 2017

including: Domestica, by Sarah Swan ; Series out of Sequence, by Carrie Hunter ; random_lines = random.choice, by Jason Christie ; THIRTY-THREE, by Geoffrey Young ; marginal prints, by philip miletic ; ASTRAL PROJECTION, by Kyle Flemmer ; a a novel 1-20, by Derek Beaulieu ; No Right on Red, by Helen Hajnoczky ; These Ghosts / This Compost: An Aubadeclogue, by Jake Syersak ; SWAMP / SWAMP, by Brenda Iijima ; INVISIBLE WIFE, by Sarah Fox ; from: Sunny girls, by Sandra Moussempès (translated by Eléna Rivera ; Stephen Collis, FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN ; Jordan Abel, TIMELESS AMERICAN CLASSIC ; poorsong one, by Lisa Robertson ; Marilyn Irwin, north ; Open Island, by Faizal Deen ; Inaccuracies, by Ian Whistle ; The Lover is Absent, by Jessica Smith ; SOMEWHERE THE / SHAKING, by Sarah Cook ; CANCON, by nathan dueck

while supplies last (like, obviously,

To order, send cheques (US orders, add $2 for postage; outside Canada/US, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

with forthcoming titles from: Alyssa Bridgman, Geoffrey Nilson, Matthew Johnstone, Adele Graf, N.W. Lea, Sacha Archer, Stephanie Bolster, Buck Downs, Valerie Coulton, Katy Lederer and Sarah Dowling. but if you were a subscriber, you wouldn't even need to be scrolling through names, right? 2018 subscriptions will become available beginning October 1, 2017 (there are a lot of cool things already in the works for our twenty-fifth year...).

and keep an eye out on the annual above/ground press anniversary reading/launch/party! most likely to occur in August; there is so much to come I can't even,

some author activity: Beaulieu, Price, Cook, Archer + Reed,

"At a Distance from One's Own Body: A Conversation with Derek Beaulieu and Katie L. Price" is now online at Hamilton Arts & Letters; Sarah Cook has a new essay on Anne Sexton over at many gendered mothers; forthcoming author Sacha Archer has some new work up at h&; and Marthe Reed is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

Scott Bryson reviews Sarah Swan's Domestica (2017) in Broken Pencil

Not the most gushing of reviews (and he seems to acknowledge a nuance he also completely misses), Scott Bryson has provided the first review of Sarah Swan's Domestica (2017) in Broken Pencil. You can see the original review here.

Domestica Chapbook, Sarah Swan, 24 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.com, $4

Domestica is a title that manages to conjure elegance and tedium at the same time, and that dichotomy is mirrored in Sarah Swan’s verse. In subsequent breaths, she compares her children’s “clear and clean” faces to icebergs in a Lawren Harris painting, then finds herself swept up by a wave of monotony as she pulls them down the sidewalk in a wagon, “grey square after grey square / after / solemn / grey / square.”

This collection is only half homebody musings; the riskiest — and most rewarding — section of Domestica is a numbered series of poems, all titled “Childhood.” Each does little more than list items, scenes or events that are presumably all from Swan’s youth. It’s a recipe for idiosyncrasy, but that line is never crossed; Swan’s choices for the lists consistently breed familiarity, at least for this reader: “The squat green / rotary telephone. // Porridge and / molasses. // Burrs / stuck / on my / sweater.”

If you’re looking for uncomplicated, mater-of-fact poetry, this one’s a safe bet. There’s nothing veiled, here — what you see is what you get — but Swan doesn’t sacrifice subtlety or nuance.