De Villo Sloan reviews Johannes S.H. Bjerg and Charlotte Jung's collaborative eyesore (2025) at Asemic Front 2

De Villo Sloan was good enough to provide a first review of Johannes S.H. Bjerg and Charlotte Jung's collaborative eyesore (2025) over at Asemic Front 2. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As they write:

AF2 Review - "eyesore" by Johannes S.H. Bjerg & Charlotte Jung (above/ground press, Canada)

Stockholm-based poet and playwright Charlotte Jung and Danish writer and artist Johannes S.H. Bjerg have collaborated to produce what might easily prove to be this year’s best collection of visual poetry: Jung’s minimalist concrete poetry and Bjerg’s calligraphic, asemic neoglyphs. 

rob mclennan – above/ground press editor – again displays his talent for locating and publishing the best postavant art and lit in his burgeoning chapbook series.  eyesore is eminently collectible, and the thoughtful reader will want to revisit the book many times to explore its possibilities for interpretation.

Johannes S.H. Bjerg is known in the visual poetry community primarily for his calligraphy-based asemic texts. He eschews the faux abstract expressionist approach taken by many of his contemporaries in favor of a stark, black and white textuality that complements Charlotte Jung’s poetry perfectly. Bjerg's vision of asemics is similar to the vision of Jim Leftwich and Tim Gaze (1993).

Bjerg’s compositions in eyesore are imbued with complexity not fitting a strict minimalist definition. His cursive streams weave in, above, and below the boundaries of our shared language.

Yet each piece is a single entity, drawing from the concept of the neoglyph (a term coined by John R. McConnochie). In the context of eyesore, each of Bjerg’s pieces can be read as a single asemic poem in a dialog with Jung’s work. His asemic pieces, for me, are similar to the approach taken by John M. Bennett and Henry Michaux.

In my review of Charlotte Jung’s Collected (Timglaset 2023), I praised her concrete poetry, which I see sharing many traits with the work of Aram Saroyan. She works within the constraints of concrete poetry rooted in Modernity.

Jung also has a unique ability to present fluidity and subtle expression in a way that surpasses the work of previous generations. eyesore is another valuable addition to the growing body of Jung’s work.

rob mclennan has made an important contribution to vispo with the publication of this chapbook. The audience is presented with a unique opportunity to explore “new poetries” in the form of asemic writing and minimalist poetry in a lyric sequence. In eyesore, we see a glimpse of poetry’s future.

some author activity: Davis, Norris, Ladouceur, Doller, Maloukis, Trivedi + Boyle,

Jordan Davis has some new poems up at A Poet in Mexico; part five of Ken Norris' Confessions is now online; Ben Ladouceur has a poem up at NewPoetry; Sandra Doller writes on Fanny Howe's "The Witness" for Poetry Daily; Rose Maloukis has a poem in print and online at The New Quarterly; Amish Trivedi has a piece on C.D. Wright as part of a curated "cluster" on her work at Post45; and Frances Boyle has new work up at Public Reverie.

Jeremy Luke Hill chapbook launch in Elora + Holiday Book Tasting,

Jeremy Luke Hill launches his above/ground press chapbook, a burrow, a nest, a lea stone (2025) at the Elora Public Library alongside Tom Vaine (The Ballad of Omega Brown) and Jerry Prager (Skidding with the Quarrymen) on Saturday, November 29, 2025, from 2pm to 4:30pm. Further information here, and even catch the short piece he wrote on the collection here.

You can also catch him as part of the upcoming Gordon Hill Press and The Porcupines' Quill Holiday Book Tasting at The Hive (33 Cork Street West, Guelph) alongside Jerry Prager on Monday, December 15, 2025 at 7pm. Further information here.

new from above/ground press: BAD TEMPOR, by Jimmy T Cahill

BAD TEMPOR
Jimmy T Cahill
$6

III: erratic time-keeping,

a few hard blows 
destroy the timing
Almost immediately

This should result in
complete freedom

At this point
bend upward
in a spirit
where the end is to be,

This brief
release
sometimes jumps
to the highest point

at that moment
the seconds
rises and falls,

an escape

the escape

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

These poems were erased, plundered, and remixed using the text Handbook of Watch and Clock Repairs by H.G. Harris, 1961. (Revised edition 1972)

Jimmy T Cahill is a nonbinary writer of poetry and science fiction/fantasy. They have over eight chapbooks available from presses across North America. Their work has most recently been featured by Opaat Press (2024) and The Ampersand Review (2025).  More about them can be found at jimmytcahill.com.

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

Gordon Phinn reviews Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (2025) and Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) at The Seaboard Reader

Gordon Phinn provides a first review of Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (2025) and a new review of Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) at The Seaboard Review. Thanks so much! This is actually the third review of Kemp's title, after Jennifer Wenn's review over at The Miramichi Reader and Karl Jirgens reviewed such over at The Typescript. You can see Phinn's original review here.

Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (Above/Ground Press, 1879/2015)

Chapbooks: As outlined in Eli MacLaren’s Little Resilience: The Ryerson Poetry Chapbooks (McGill-Queens 2021), these diminutive pamphlets have been a low profile but integral element of CanLit for decades. Between 1925 and 1962 Ryerson Press produced over 200. Since the 70/80’s the genre has, with the advent of copy machines, blossomed. Heck, I’ve done about a dozen myself. In its now expansive corral, new work is led out of the barn by poets and prose stylists trying out experiments in form and expression that might not otherwise see the light of day. Once not always so easy to acquire, the digital age, with all its websites, podcasts, and Substacks, has simplified the task. One can observe a wide selection as they canter around the exercise yard, finding their new legs and admirers. One seemingly inexhaustible source is Rob Mclennan’s Above/Ground press, and if I’m not mistaken, his stable has at least 600 residents. Mind you, I’m a past master at being mistaken.

Allow me to remedy whatever lack you may feel by introducing a couple of new contenders, each with a unique and valuable contribution to make. Jamie Sharpe, a Comox BC writer with five books to his credit, has uncovered a long neglected 19th century Quebecois poet, Eudore Evanturel, whose only book, Premieres Poesies from 1879, was not well received by the critics of the day and the disappointment led him to retire and relocate to Lowell, Massachusetts.

In his preface Sharpe reveals that on encountering Evanturel’s work he felt confronted with “a misplaced heirloom, a finely etched reliquary of longing, wit and restraint” and that his approach was “not archival but sympathetic”, and his use of “succinct English cadence” was to “allow the poems to exist without the velvet rope and museum glass.” In this he has succeeded admirably, allowing the shelved sentiments to breathe freely. Many of the verses are tantalizingly brief, some approaching the remote elevation of the haiku:

Village at Noon

Whitewashed walls lean
Under noon’s sunlight.  A lone bicycle
Collapsed by the door.  Somewhere:
Laughter, a  saucepan clatter.
The village slow and bright.
A midday lull in a world
Kept small.
To My Reader

Hold these words close, like a flower
Pressed, preserved, between pages.
Let it oblige your fingers to turn into
Glints of quiet contemplations waiting
For your own heart to finish them.
One hopes for more translations and research on this buried treasure.

Lives Of Dead Poets by Penn Kemp (Above/Ground Press 2025)

Penn Kemp has been regarded as something of an iconoclast and trailblazer for fifty odd years, the composer of thirty plus books of poetry and prose, seven plays and several daring, and dare I say seductive, experiments in sound poetry. If you suspect that there are boundaries that yet require breaking then Penn has already been there, joyously deconstructing. In this chapbook, she fondly recalls the lives and work of contemporaries who have shifted their focus to that universe next door. Let me say: she knocks and gains entry.

Gwen MacEwen, Robert Creeley, Robert Hogg, bp nicol, Jack Spicer, Phyllis Webb, John Ashbery, James Reaney, Colleen Thibaudeau, P.K. Page, Robert Kroetsch, Teva Harrison, Joe Blades & Ellen S. Jaffe: all are evoked, praised, loved and grieved. Her heart is in the right place and her aim is true.

One by One, They Depart, the Great Ones

The sound of voices
I wish I could hear, voices
now dissolved to ether, to

the vagaries of memory, lost in
translation.  What’s that?

How could such
presence disintegrate?

How could so much 
wisdom evaporate with
the body’s decay?

A chasm awaits 
Across the great 
division.

As the poets fall into their tradition,
our beloved dead are more intimate
now than they ever could be in the flesh.

Only their poetry can still convey
intimations of immortality, subtle slips
we grasp as truth, not knowing for sure

what is real, what is fantasy and false,
what lies somewhere in between as true.

Only their poems can transcribe
mysterium tremendum – where they’ve gone.
Their words embodied on the page,

For me.                                               For you.

new from above/ground press: SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST, by Amanda Earl

SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST
Amanda Earl
$6

In the cab en route to a place referred to as 
home, I tried to remember what being alive was 
like. I told myself to answer when my husband 
ended a noun verb object structure with an 
uprised tone. To me it sounded like zero zero 
zero up up? I think my response was one 
syllable two syllable two head nods.

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

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, edits, reviews, publishes and makes mischief on the unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Subscribe to her Substack, Amanda Thru the Looking Glass and buy limited edition gorgeousness from Creatively Yours, her forthcoming year-long whimsical collaborative creation with her husband, Charles Earl. More info: AmandaEarl.com. Instagram: earlamanda.

This is Amanda Earl’s eleventh chapbook with above/ground press, after Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015), Lady Lazarus Redux (2017), The Book of Mark (2018), Aftermath or Scenes of a Woman Convalescing (2019), Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (2020), a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) and THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia (2022). She edited the above/ground press collection the suitcase poem (2025), as well as the first issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (2018). In 2022, above/ground press produced Report from the Earl Society, Vol. 1, No. 1.

[Amanda Earl launches this title in Ottawa on Friday, alongside Stuart Ross and Liam Burke, as part of the pre-ottawa small press fair reading at Anina's Cafe]

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

a (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan : December 7, 2025

a (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan
on above/ground press
in which they (also) each read from recent work
Sunday Dec 7, 2025 / 7pm EST on zoom

a zoom link will be offered just prior to the event via the facebook event page; or email rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com to register;

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU, and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOTJBAP, forthcoming in Spring 2026 with Nightwood Editions. She lives in East Vancouver.

Saklikar is the author of three titles through above/ground press: After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees— (2016; second printing, 2019), from The Book of Bramah (2019) and Voices from Planet X ~ speculative verse from the THOTJBAP series (2025).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

He founded above/ground press way back in July 1993, having produced nearly 1,500 items-to-date, the bulk of which have been single author poetry chapbooks. His publishing mantra continues to be: "relentless."

some author activity: Praamsma, Campanello, Turnbull, Vitkauskas, Smith + Rosenthal,

Wanda Praamsma has new work up at Pamenar Press online, as does Kimberly Campanello and Chris Turnbull; Lina Ramona Vitkauskas has had some new poems up at The Fortnightly Review; Dale Smith is featured in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; and Sarah Rosenthal is interviewed via Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: Studies, by Micah Anthony Cavaleri

Studies
Micah Anthony Cavaleri
$6

The study of a poem
is not scientific
.  The study is grounded
It is an experience.

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

Micah Cavaleri has lived many lives—as a philosopher, poet, soldier, publisher, pastor, and father. He has published several books, including One Bright Morning When My Work is Over. Home is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he writes and cooks for his wife and daughter.

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

Peter Jaeger is on the 2025 Nelson Ball Prize short list! (along w Stebner, Christakos etc

Congratulations to the entire 2025 Nelson Ball Prize short list! (do you remember the longlist?) Naturally, it is very exciting to see an above/ground press title on the list, by Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, as well as titles by above/ground press authors Margaret Christakos (author of the 2019 title Retreat Diary 2019) and Kevin Stebner (author of the 2023 title AGALMA). In case you aren't aware:

The Nelson Ball Prize, worth $1,000, is awarded annually to a Canadian poet for a published work that features 'poetry of observation.' * The judges this year are James McDonald and Beverley Daurio. Stay tuned for announcement of the winning publication in the first week of December.

Here's the full list of shortlisted titles:

Margaret Christakos, That Audible Slippage (University of Alberta Press)
Jeremy Clarke, Stone Hours (Rufus Books)
Peter Jaeger, Selected Memoirs (above/ground press)
Kevin Stebner, Inherent (Assembly Press)
Michael Trussler, 10:10 (Icehouse Poetry)

new from above/ground press: The Man, by Benjamin Niespodziany

The Man
a sequence of foolish men
Benjamin Niespodziany
$6

The Man with the Tail

When he argued
with his doctor
it wandered.

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

Benjamin Niespodziany's writing has appeared in Fence, Conduit, Fairy Tale Review, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. He has previously released two chapbooks (one with above/ground press, one with Dark Hour Books) and two full-length books (one with Okay Donkey and one with X-R-A-Y). He also hosts the Neon Night Mic reading series in Chicago and recently launched the indie publication Piżama Press. You can find more at neonpajamas.com.

This is Niespodziany's second above/ground press chapbook, after The Northerners (2021).

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 Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 21: Stuart Ross, Liam Burke + Amanda Earl,

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:
Stuart Ross (Cobourg ON)
Liam Burke (Ottawa)
+ 
Amanda Earl (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 21, 2025
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

Stuart Ross has worked in the small press trenches of Canadian writing for 50 years. His new chapbook, The Thing About the Thing in Exile reprints a dozen poems that appeared in his first publication at age 16, plus a new essay. He has published over 20 books, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, the Trillium Book Award–winning memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. He has received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, as well as the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature. Stuart runs the Feed Dog Book imprint for surrealist poetry at Anvil Press and the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions, and has been running his own Proper Tales Press since 1979. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

Liam Burke (he/him/himbo) lives in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. He is the winner of the 2023 Diana Brebner Prize, and is most recently the author of status ailment (Anstruther, 2025) and the co-author of Orbital Cultivation with Manahil Bandukwala (Collusion, 2021) and machine dreams with natalie hanna (Collusion, 2021) which was shortlisted for the 2022 bpNichol Chapbook Award. He was shortlisted for the 2022 Austin Clarke Award for a collaborative poem with Manahil Bandukwala.

Amanda Earl [photo credit: Charles Earl] (she/her) writes, edits, reviews, publishes and makes mischief on the unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Subscribe to her Substack, Amanda Thru the Looking Glass and buy limited edition gorgeousness from Creatively Yours, her forthcoming year-long whimsical collaborative creation with her husband, Charles Earl. Her latest chapbook, her eleventh with above/ground press, is SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST (2025). More info: AmandaEarl.com. Instagram: earlamanda.

some author activity: Smith, Unrau, Bell, Myers + Ross,

Steve Ross Smith has a new song up at bandcamp; Melanie Dennis Unrau is interviewed via the "12 or 20 questions" series; Wade Bell has new work up at Public Reverie; Peter Myers has new work up at noir sauna; and Stuart Ross is interviewed by Tali Voron-Leiderman for The Ampersand Review.

new from above/ground press: The Sun Will Bleach It Away, by Rebecca Comay / Cary Fagan

The Sun Will Bleach It Away
Rebecca Comay / Cary Fagan
$6

Beer, light, Portuguese, German, English; how brittle is old paper in the seller’s hand.




The battered brass weight hung so heavily between her fingers.


Authors’ Note

In February and March of 2019, we spent several weeks in Lisbon.  One of us wrote a sentence in a blank notebook and handed it to the other who wrote a sentence in return.  This handing back and forth occurred about once a day until we left the city for home.  

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

Rebecca Comay teaches philosophy and comparative literature at The University of Toronto. Her books include Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford UP) and The Dash-The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (with Frank Ruda, MIT Press). Her next book, On Persistence is the first of two essay collections forthcoming from Seagull Books. She is a co-editor of the chapbook house, espresso. More work can be seen at rebeccacomay.com

Cary Fagan is the author of eight novels and six story collections as well as many books for children. Just published are A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News (book*hug) and Robot Island (Tundra Books). His novel, Still the World, will appear in 2027. He is a co-editor of the chapbook house, espresso, and the publisher of Found Object, which focuses on bringing work back into print. His books can he seen at caryfagan.com.

This is Fagan's third title through above/ground press, after Fifty-Two Lines About Henry (2024) and then / here / now / there (2025).

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

new from above/ground press: DIDIKUY, by Guy Birchard

DIDIKUY
Guy Birchard
$6

The Didikuy Renders Each Her Moment

A. Heeney, who does not idealize pretty,
for whom 'pretty' has ever been no goal,
for whom beauty excels, as she pledges
her torch song to extol, favors, expressly, Light.

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

Guy Birchard's most recent title is MOST BY BOOKS (Symple Persone Press, 2023).

This is Birchard’s third chapbook with above/ground press, after VALEDICTIONS (2019) and MONTCORBIER (2020).

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

new from above/ground press: SLOPTIMISM of the WILL, by MLA Chernoff

SLOPTIMISM of the WILL
MLA Chernoff
$6

Speech Difficulty
When I think of you, I think of me––
how clumsily my absence snogs 
your presence, how a pillar of salt 
squirms where my tongue used to be, 
how a bespoke dictionary abruptly 
replaces itself on your shelf, as
the room undresses unfit mirrors
revealing the wake a moon who yields 
its time and fucks off into the hollering
cloud beds we crafted upon the rust of golems.

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

Moral: MLA Chernoff (@sickass_sicko) is a slick, sick, and sappy writer based out of Toronto. Their debut poetry collection, [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], was released by Gordon Hill Press in 2021 to very little acclaim. Oh well! They are the author of seven poetry chapbooks, including TERSE THIRSTY, I'M LIKE THE GREAT GRANDCHILD OF MARX & COCA-COLA (BUT NON-BINEY), and ESTRO FLUNKY. Get it through your thick and juicy skull: they will never stop. MLA’s work has been featured in numerous journals, such as PRISM International, The Ex-Puritan, and Peach Mag. Their poetry was longlisted for the 2024 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. MLA has won no awards, but not for lack of trying. Oh well! Get in touch at mlachernoff.com.

Sincerely and with kind regards,
Your humble and obedient servant,

MLA Chernoff

This is Chernoff’s third above/ground press title, after SCRIED FUNDAMENTS (2022) and ESTRO FLUNKY: FIELD NOTES (2023).

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

this weekend! above/ground press in toronto at the tifa small press fair + meet the presses' indie lit market,

In case you are around, I'll be (along with a mound of above/ground press titles + my new poetry title, the book of sentences) participating in two different small press fairs this weekend in Toronto:

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST: Toronto International Festival of Authors SMALL PRESS FAIR, 10am-5pm, Victoria College https://festivalofauthors.ca/event/small-press-fair-2025/

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND: Meet the Presses INDIE LIT MARKET, noon to 4pm, Cecil Centre, 58 Cecil Street, https://www.instagram.com/p/DN6d0WDDvUo/?hl=en

can you believe above/ground press is more than three decades old? new and forthcoming by russell carisse, Kevin Spenst, Lillian Nećakov, Jill Stengel, Cary Fagan and Rebecca Comay, Guy Birchard, Benjamin Niespodziany, Buck Downs, Jeremy Luke Hill, Mrityunjay Mohan, Kate Siklosi, Charlotte Jung and Johannes S.H. Bjerg, Eudore Évanturel (trans. by Jamie Sharpe, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Jason Heroux, Ken Norris, Jon Cone, Ben Ladouceur, Yaxkin Melchy (trans. by Ryan Greene, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Michael Sikkema, Laynie Browne, Nada Gordon, Stuart Ross, Ellen Chang-Richardson etc etc etc https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/

and i hear my new poetry title is amazing: https://press.ucalgary.ca/books/9781773856483/

drop by if you are able!

some author activity: McElroy, Thomas, Burgoyne, Norris, Bolster, Swensen + eckhoff,

Gil McElroy has some new work in long con magazine, as does Hugh Thomas and even Sarah Burgoyne, offering her thoughts on the work of Gail Scott; part four of Ken Norris' memoir, "Confessions of a True Believer," is now online; Stephanie Bolster answers questions over at On Creative Writing; Cole Swensen has some work up at Big Other; and kevin mcpherson eckhoff has started to publish fiction.

new from above/ground press: Circling the Black Sun, by Lance La Rocque

Circling the Black Sun
Lance La Rocque
$6

Charlatan

Howl without
The as if
They exist

Scrolling timeless light

Influencers louder
Than the antique moon
Hanging
Agape

LOL

I sense the earth move
I think—
Crumbling
As if 
Crushed

A hard species
These giddy rich
Get off
Will last a little longer

The starstruck mobs
Eyes following
Their as if
Dangling over the void

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

Lance La Rocque lives in Wolfville, NS, with Lisa—and sometimes Emily and Max. He teaches “The Writer and Nature” and “Experimental Poetry” at Acadia University. His work has appeared in Hava Lehaba, The Northern Testicle Review, and Industrial Sabotage. He was included in the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Poets Under the Influence, and has published a chapbook, Glitch (above/ground press), and a poetry collection, Vermin (BookHug).

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

some author activity: Boyle, Carr, Johnson, Mc Donnell + mclennan,

Frances Boyle has new work up at talking about strawberries all of the time; Julie Carr is interviewed over at Tupelo Quarterly; Chris Johnson has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; Conor Mc Donnell has an essay up at The Woodlot, as does rob mclennan, who also offers an essay on his new poetry manuscript-in-progress, a poem from such is now up at minor literature[s].

new from above/ground press: That H uman E ffluence A nd P lastic, by russell carisse

That H uman E ffluence A nd P lastic
russell carisse
$6

§1.078

Does your recombine-harvester’s entropy drive knock under stress? Are you able to hear the subtle differences in trash density? Have you even considered harmonic relativity? If not, then you’re missing what looks to be the next Water Rush, but you can still act if you act now! The HEAP can proto-fit your’s, and all we ask is that you preform your operations in accordance with our corporate philosophy: it’s always about the process, and may your’s complicate the process infinitely. Proto-fit now!

§1.934

Summer awoke in yesterday’s clothes, sweaty from fever induced dreams. After struggling with the soaked clothes, it was the usual swish into the neé 3003 model water extractor’s hopper. The inefficiency of changing burned the much needed time to do nothing. Doing nothing burned in the back of their mind, while their calculated motions worked for sufficient gains. New clothes from the receptacle unwrapped, with less struggle put on muttering,”I’ll get that new model yet, then you'll see me here!”

§1.009

What began before The Great Coagulation as a modest family septic-tank company, Human Effluents And Plastic (HEAP), has become the only name of trust. If it wasn’t for Sum deGuy’s micro-water extraction technique, we would be distilling landfill juice, for our water needs to this day. With discovery that plastic harbours microscopic amounts water, Sum began a patented process to squeeze the water out before landfill. A most complicated process employing the largest supply chains employing us all.

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

russell carisse is currently living on unceded Wolastoqiyik/Mi’kmaw territory in New Brunswick. Here they have resettled from Tkaronto (Treaty 13) to an off-grid trailer in the woods, with their family of people and animals, to grow food and practice other forms of underconsumption. Author of five chapbooks, their work forthcoming or in, ARC Poetry, Queen’s Quarterly, The Temz Review, Touch the Donkey, also online. Website: russellcarisse.carrd.co Mastodon: @russellcarisse@writing.exchange Bluesky: @russellcarisse.bsky.social

This is carisse's fourth title through above/ground press, after English Garden Bondage (2022), In The Margins. . . . . .of french translations found and remixed by russell carisse (2024) and poetry and labour / is concrete (2024).

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

Cristalle Smith reviews Melissa Spohr Weiss' Motion & Force (2022) via Instagram,

Cristalle Smith was good enough to provide a first review of Melissa Spohr Weiss' Motion & Force (2022) via Instagram. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As she writes:

Motion & Force
Melissa Spohr Weiss
@sonnets_and_sloths

above/ground press 2022
@rob_mclennan_writer

Form frees noise, more than cacophony, in Melissa Spohr Weiss’s Motion & Force. Nip utterance builds alliteration into terse experiences that defy narrativizing: “Can a nature-eater earn / tenure? Can a cute crane // taunt a recent teen?” (“Utterance”). Listen. “O, Calypso! I hold paid holidays,” an unknown speaker cries in “Physical Body” while “Holy playboy ladys abolish / cops.” Find sense in pattern, repetition, an alphabet soup of rules to count to ten. Tin cans spill tomato broth and squishy noodles.

Is that an oboe boo floating in? A clarinet reed? Read the lines down, then up, then down again: “A rat entered yer rented / tavern. Ate yer nerve” (“Everyday Event”). Tercets with enjambment. Some kind of sonnet(not?) That’s okay, “An erect centaur can’t eat / true tuna” (“Utterance”). Did you have a dream(nightmare) you can’t remember? But still hear the sounds? Pluck string taut and mince meaning-acrostic-acoustic-an office, “O conifer comet!” (“Motion & Force”). Some poetry makes sense sounds in pilfering a rabbit tart.

Get in, losers. We are blasting this anthem until 5:00 AM.

John Levy wins the 2025 Shelley Memorial Award!

In case you hadn't heard, Arizona poet (and above/ground press author) John Levy has won the 2025 Shelley Memorial Award, presented by the Poetry Society of America and selected by Matthew Zapruder! Congratulations! Now, I hadn't heard of this thing either, but apparently it was established from the will of a Mary P. Sears to be "given to a living American poet selected with reference to genius and need," and named after poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (of course). Presented annually since 1930, prior winners include E.E. Cummings, Robinson Jeffers, Anne Sexton, Ruth Stone, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Creeley, Muriel Rukeyser, Jean Valentine, Alice Notley (another above/ground press author), Joyelle McSweeney, George Stanley (another above/ground press author), Rick Barot, Gillian Conoley, Evie Shockley, Shin Yu Pai and Arthur Sze [a full list of winners can be found here].

There are still copies, of course, of Levy's above/ground press title To Assemble an Absence (2024). Check out Levy's full bio (a new book forthcoming, by the way), a hefty "Judge's Citation" by Zapruder and a few Levy poems over at the Poetry Society of America link. Or, as Zapruder writes:

It’s a lucky joy to stumble across a poet and fall in love with their work. What a gift. When it happens, I always want to reach out and tell all my poet friends the good news. Look at all these new (to us) poems we get to read! When a student of mine, the poet Robyn Schelenz, sent me a few of John Levy’s poems, I found them to be so direct and open, honest, precise, generous, funny, kind, and for lack of a better word, natural, that I could not wait to read more, and to tell everyone I knew about them. It felt to me like what I am always searching for, often desperately, in poetry: the language totally unforced, but also casually precise and alive, as if some kind of precious thinking is happening right in front of me. Reading Levy’s poems felt, yes, a bit like coming across someone who had read and maybe even known the poets of the New York School, and who had absorbed their intelligence and joy and liberated way of moving around a poem, but without their sometimes exhaustingly arch knowingness. There is a youthful innocence to Levy’s poems, the kind of innocence you only truly achieve when you have been around a while, and know that as Rilke said, the way to be a poet is to act like it’s the first time not just you, but anyone, has seen anything. I think of what the (then young) Dylan sang: I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. Combined with the dismayed comedy and genuine sorrow of a person who has had the privilege and misfortune to reside a while on earth, the poems feel like they are truly wise. I wonder if he, like me, also loves the philosopher poets of Eastern and Central Europe, and the attentive naturalists of the Tang. But other than all the poets and others he mentions in his poems, I actually have no idea really what John Levy reads or loves. I just know his poems bring me aforementioned joy, so rare these days. I am so grateful I was asked to judge this important prize from the Poetry Society, honoring a mid-career poet, whatever that is. As far as I am concerned, John Levy, whom I have never met, is one, for he must have been there for quite a while without me knowing, and he sure seems like he still has a lot to say. I am so happy I get to share his work with you all. I hope, and suspect, that you will get as much pleasure out of John Levy’s poetry as I do.

Peter Jaeger is on the 2025 Nelson Ball Prize long list! (along w Stebner, Robinson, Christakos etc

Congratulations to the entire 2025 Nelson Ball Prize long list! Naturally, it is very exciting to see an above/ground press title on the list, by Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, as well as titles by above/ground press authors Margaret Christakos (author of the 2019 title Retreat Diary 2019), Ben Robinson (author of three above/ground press titles, most recently the 2023 title Between the Lakes) and Kevin Stebner (author of the 2023 title AGALMA). In case you aren't aware:

The Nelson Ball Prize, worth $1,000, is awarded annually to a Canadian poet for a published work that features 'poetry of observation.' * The judges this year are James McDonald and Beverley Daurio. Stay tuned for the Short List, and then the announcement of the winning publication.

Here's the full list of longlisted titles:

Margaret Christakos, That Audible Slippage (University of Alberta Press)
Jeremy Clarke, Stone Hours (Rufus Books)
Peter Jaeger, Selected Memoirs (above/ground press)
Dawn Macdonald, Northerny (University of Alberta Press)
Michael Ondaatje, A Year of Last Things (McClelland & Stewart)
Ben Robinson, As Is (ARP Books)
Angeline Schellenberg, Mondegreen Riffs (At Bay Press)
Kevin Stebner, Inherent (Assembly Press)
Michael Trussler, 10:10 (Icehouse Poetry)
Matthew Walsh, Terrarium (Icehouse Poetry)

new from above/ground press: a nest, a burrow, a lea stone, by Jeremy Luke Hill

a nest, a burrow, a lea stone
Jeremy Luke Hill
$6

The Body as Home and World

Many traditional cultures have understood the body, the home, and the world to be figures for one another, where, for example, the ribs of the chest mean the beams of the house mean the arch of the sky. 

We are ever more precisely mapped 
but no longer know the meaning of where 

we are. The body is no more a home,
the home no more a world. I have papered 

the walls of my room with pictures of sons, 
covers of books, posters of festivals,

the ephemera of a life. When children 
come into custody, they bring nothing

with them but their hurt. This is called making 
a break with the past. We must be put back

in our place, made to know it like a nest, 
a burrow, a lea stone, a placenta,

an eggshell. Our dining room table 
belonged to my wife's parents. They bought it

when just married, to hold them until
they could afford better, but it has served

four generations now through fifty years.
Children of neglect must often be taught 

how to eat at a table, how to manipulate 
cutlery, how to believe there will still

be food tomorrow. Home must always be
relearned. I have planted our gardens 

with flowers stolen from the places where
our children were loved—jack-in-the-pulpits,

lady slippers, peonies—a landscape
irreconcilable with digital maps, 

with satellite GPS, with sequenced DNA,
where our ribs hold space like arches of sky,

where the beams of the house grow within us.

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

Jeremy Luke Hill is the publisher at Gordon Hill Press and The Porcupine's Quill, small press literary publishers based in Guelph, Ontario. He has written several books, chapbooks, and broadsheets, most recently Microchimaera (Baseline Press, 2024). His writing has appeared in many magazines and journals, including The Antigonish Review, ARC Poetry, CNQ, CV2, EVENT Magazine, filling Station, Free Fall, The Goose, HA&L, The Maynard, and The Puritan.

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

some author activity: Crosby, Witek, Chang-Richardson, Smith, Tucker, Holmes + Young,

Gregory Crosby is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time, as is Terri Witek; Ellen Chang-Richardson is interviewed by Leila Marshy at All Lit Up; Pete Smith is in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; Aaron Tucker and Michael Holmes and Derek Beaulieu all have new work up at NewPoetry; and Geoffrey Young has new work in the Spotlight series.

new from above/ground press: The World is Beautiful, by Lillian Nećakov

The World is Beautiful 
Lillian Nećakov
$6

The World is Beautiful

David Hockney says the world is beautiful. I believe him, because I am an optimist, knowing the average weights of the organs of the human body, knowing, there is a kind of reincarnation, even after you tell them, you sometimes wished you were a boy. Knowing the brain, at 49 ½ oz. Avoir – one thousand, three hundred eighty-nine point 13 grams and a bit more - is generous enough to endure both imagination and crown through the acrobatics of feasts and funerals.

David Hockney’s heart equals 11 oz. His eyes are the word we use for the colour of water, he widens the Grand Canyon as easily as letting out a seam, says the world is beautiful and I believe him. Knowing that lungs {right 24 oz. left 21 oz.} are the colanders of time, cradling vestiges of scree from the mass of one breath {0.5-5 g} times a lifetime. Knowing that there are lakes drowning in the whimsical ether of a tourniquet-wielding junkie-planet, invisible and blue.

David Hockney believes me when I say the world is beautiful, knowing that every swimming pool is a small bit of heaven where you and Fred Astaire are always cheek to cheek, knowing that a body in motion stays in motion, knowing that the executioner never takes his finger off the trigger, not even when the kiss is slower than death. Knowing that Popeye clung to Olive Oyl behind the spinach cannery while the sun parched our lips raw. Knowing that night is coming, like a confession, dressed in raspberry, saw-toothed hot pants.

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

Lillian Nećakov is the author of many chapbooks, including, The Lake Contains and Emergency Room (Apt. 9 Press; shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award), as well as the full-length collections il virus (Anvil Press; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award), Hooligans (Mansfield Press), The Bone Broker (Mansfield Press), Hat Trick (Exile Editions), Polaroids (Coach House Books), The Sickbed of Dogs (Wolsak and Wynn), Midnight Glossolalia, a collaborative poetry collection with Scott Ferry and Lauren Scharhag (Meat for Tea Press), Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses eye, a collaborative poem with Gary Barwin (Guernica Editions). She has also published in many print and online journals in Canada and the U.S. Lillian lives in Toronto.

This is Nećakov’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after 3¢ Pulp (2022).

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

new from above/ground press: household: meadow, by Kate Siklosi

household: meadow
Kate Siklosi
$6

The yard

hers, unsilenced, hers, bright. uttered. unafraid of syntax, little fire, lit and sparking. open-mouthed, barefoot, bellied to the sun.

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

cover image by Mina Simone Siklosi Welch

Kate Siklosi’s work includes Selvage (Invisible 2023), leavings (Timglaset 2021), and six chapbooks of poetry. Her critical and creative work has also been featured across North America, Europe, and the UK. She also curates the Small Press Map of Canada and is co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press.

This is Kate Siklosi’s third above/ground press title, after po po poems (2018) and 1956 (2019). She co-edited (with Dani Spinosa) G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #8 (2020). In 2022, above/ground press produced Report from the Siklosi Society, Vols. 1 and 2.

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

De Villo Sloan reviews Nada Gordon's COPIUM (2025) at Asemic Front 2

De Villo Sloan was good enough to provide a first review of Nada Gordon's COPIUM (2025) over at Asemic Front 2. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As they write:

COPIUM by Nada Gordon
Ottawa, Canada: above/ground press, August 2025
24 pages; stapled

Review by De Villo Sloan

rob mclennan has added another literary gem to the list of recent chapbooks issued by above/ground press in Ottawa, Canada, with the publication of COPIUM by Nada Gordon.

COPIUM is a single lyric poem composed of elegant tercets that encode opulent imagery like ornate beadwork. Through associations, wordplay, unexpected juxtapositions, and explorations of poetic discourse, Gordon creates a unique and engaging record of what in Modernity is known as “the stream of consciousness.”

Her narrative melds objective and subjective realities; she skillfully provides multiple perspectives on daily life. The book includes images by Gordon in collaboration with MidJourney AI.

COPIUM succeeds on its Flarfy juxtapositions, irony, popcult references, and occasional absurdist incoherence. She has developed a postavant poetic line that extends Modernist fragmentation into new realms, which I believe is an accomplishment of great significance.

Nada Gordon has a rare ability to create poetic forms that permit (if they do not encourage) multiple but equally illuminating interpretations. In COPIUM, I unexpectedly found a lyric poem of outstanding beauty and insight. The third and fourth stanzas of the poem provide a good example of how its self-reflexivity contributes to the poem’s genesis:

    Peacock fanning out…
    swans entwining necks
    as co-beings

    feathering extremities
    like kelp, flowers, hands
    in a diamond brain (brine) of lost time.

For me, the pleasure of reading COPIUM is found in its self-reflective reverie, (consciously) aesthetic escapism, and its meta-poetical commentary. Gordon gives me the sublime experience of decayed opulence described to perfection with imagery by Charles Baudelaire in The Flowers of Evil. I find myself returning to the text for the pleasure of its aesthetic decadence for the same reasons I return to Baudelaire and Poe. 

COPIUM is also a fascinating compendium of English language nouns and adjectives that are useful in both scientific and artistic discourse. Here is an example from COPIUM by Nada Gordon showing her use of particulars:

           Caves of gems, and a pomegranate gem
           as a giant war demon.
           Mendelssohn infuses a dark city

           With the idea of ‘charging’
           (being recharged) –
           rogue elephants

           the tusk, the tree
           the metals, the mortals,
           breath and gourds and reeds.

           what are:

           ‘words’ ‘texts’ ‘friends’
           ‘membranes’ ‘borders’ ‘organs’

           countries’ ‘Jews’ ‘food’
           animals’ ‘cities’ ‘books’
           ‘cells’ ‘Gaza’ ‘gauze’

Paradoxically, however, looking beyond traces of conceptual writing, Gordon’s lyric is built on the solid foundation of, “No ideas but in things.” In fact, a close linguistic analysis of the various catalogs woven into COPIUM would likely produce interesting results.

A worldview present in Gordon’s writing is that language is an inevitable intermediary in human communication, expression and – of course - poetry. COPIUM is a lush sea of imagery and a (sometimes) mechanistic interrogation of language. Nada Gordon often approaches the edge of meaning: the same terrain as asemic writers. She brings COPIUM into the realm of visual and concrete poetry:

    Owls
    Opals
    Opossums

    and a lunar pOnd
    the loss of pherOmOne pOwer
    in the OdORless digital world

    The letter O:
    Just lOOk at it!
    Ketamina LOy.

Nada Gordon's COPIUM is a multi-faceted composition that invites readers to engage with the text often, revealing multiple perspectives and interpretations. She is one of our most important poetic voices. above/ground press has done extraordinary work producing this edition. If you only purchase one chapbook in 2025, order COPIUM by Nada Gordon.