This is the fifth in a series of short essays/reminiscences
by a variety of authors and friends of the press to help mark the quarter
century mark of above/ground. See links to the whole series here.
I have above/ground press chapbooks and broadsides on my
bookshelves from the early aughts, but I don’t know when I became a subscriber.
I suspect around 2006 or so. Through their publication I have learned of
writers that were new to me. These writers made me aware of the possibility of
play, of prose poems, of the sentence as line, of fragments and of playing with
narrative.
above/ground press has been a model for my own AngelHousePress/DevilHouse, not just because of the
myriad styles of writing the chapbooks have introduced me to, but also because
of all the different things done as part of above/ground press by the seemingly
indefatigable rob mclennan.
Chapbooks alone would have been sufficient enough for any
press and we all know that this press publishes a lot of chapbooks in any given
year, but here’s a list of above/ground press activity over the past
twenty-five years in addition to the chapbooks:
Seventeen
Seconds, a journal of poetry and poetics continued from Poetics.ca
I don’t know of any more active and far-reaching press in
Canada. I am grateful that above/ground press is here and I’m happy to
celebrate its 25th year. I am fortunate to have had five chapbooks,
three broadsides published by the press, and numerous other poems published in Ottawater, PFYC, to have read at the Factory Reading Series, and also to have
done several interviews with rob through the various series. Here’s to another
25 plus!
Amanda Earl is a
writer, publisher, editor and visual poet from Ottawa. above/ground press
chapbooks include Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008),
Sex First and Then A Sandwich (2012),
A Book of Saints (2015) and Lady Lazarus Redux (2017). Her first
(and only) poetry book, Kiki, was
published by Chaudiere Books in 2014. Amanda is the managing editor of
Bywords.ca and the (fallen) angel of AngelHousePress. For more information,
visit AmandaEarl.com or connect with Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle.
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